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ERMONS 

the Clergy 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS .? 



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{UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. J 



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SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 



BY 



GAIL HAMILTON, *pbiU*A.. 

/ Living and Country Thinking," " Gale 
ire," " Woman's Worth and Worthlessnes 



Author of "Country Living and Country Thinking," " Gala Days," "A New 
Atmosphere," " Woman's Worth and Worthlessness," &c. 



\CL*~ ^ 



And Moses said unto the Lord, O my Lord, I am not 
eloquent, but I am slow of speech and of a slow tongue. 

Behold, they will not believe me, nor hearken unto 
my voice : for they will say, The Lord hath not appeared 
unto thee. 

And the Lord said unto him, Who hath made man's 
mouth ? Have not I the Lord ? 

Now, therefore, go, and I will be with thy mouth, and 
teach thee what thou shalt say. 






BOSTON: 

WILLIAM F. GILL AND COMPANY, 

309 Washington Street, 

OPPOSITE OLD SOUTH CUUBCH. 

1876. 



^s 



Copyright. 

William F. Gill & Co. 

1875. 



STEREOTYPED BY 

C. J. Peters & Son, 73 Federal Street, Boston. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

The Imperiousness of Truth . . . .9 

Adam 33 

The "Blue Blood" of Canaan 63 

Our Charities 87 

Keligious Beggary 169 

Heavenly Heathenism 207 

Prayer 227 

Tea-Party Salvation 245 

The Land of Broken Promise 259 

Missionary Musings 291 

The Laws of Anger 331 

The Sighing of the Prisoner 347 

Fair Play 375 



THE IIPEKIOIMESS OF TKUTH. 



SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 




THE IMPERIOUSNE8S OF TRUTH. 

|HERE is, and there can be, no conflict 
between scientific truth and religious truth. 
Scientific men so far as they are honest, 
and religious men so far as they are honest, are in 
pursuit of one and the same object. All controversy, 
all apparent contradiction, springs from the ignorance 
of the persons who are engaged in it. From a few 
facts that come within its ken, the Church constructs 
a s}'stem of theology ; and from its few facts the world 
constructs a system of science. Both, by reason of 
the limited knowledge of the constructors, must be 
very defective ; and from these defects it follows that 
the two systems clash, inevitably clash. But between 
the divine plan of theology and the divine framework 
of science is no clashing. They are not simply har- 
monious : they are one. Science is but a knowledge 
of the divine method. What else is theology? Both 

9 



10 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

have God for the basis and background. Even if the 
votaries of science refuse to speak the divine name, 
they are equally in search of the divine Being. God 
is not less God, because you call him an original 
Principle. 

What, then, are we striving for, — to defend our 
own, or to discover the divine system? Who believes 
that he has found all truth ? Who believes that he has 
discovered enough to make it worth while to expend 
his breath in defending it, except so far as attack and 
defence are the handmaids of discovery ? Certainty no 
theory is indispensable, except the theory which com- 
prehends all things ; and that we shall never compass 
in this world. No fact is fatal, so it be a fact. As a 
fact it must have its appropriate niche in the temple of 
Nature, u whose builder and maker is God." 

Yet a clerical discussion of certain scientific theories 
closes with this statement : — 

" Such, in a word, is the question which the thinking 
portion of the religious world are now considering. 
Shall we refuse to admit the possibility that these views 
can be true, under the idea that they exclude the ex- 
istence of creative power ? or shall we gladly receive 
them, if we find them sustained by the evidence, on 
the ground that they vastly magnify the extent and 
grandeur of its action? " 

If this be true, the religious world is surely stultify- 



THE IMPERIOUSNESS OF TRUTH. 11 

ing itself with a remarkable and appalling unanimity. 
If this be true, the religious world has not yet learned 
the A, B, C, of discovery in &ny truth whatever. Such 
truth as it holds, it holds by imposition or by accident, 
not by original acquirement ; for its method is all 
wrong. It speaks as if truth were a matter of choice 
and of consequences. By its own confession, it does 
not ask, " Is this true?" but "Will it do for us to 
admit that it is true ? " It is not concerned to know 
what the facts are, but whether it can stand the conse- 
quences of admitting those facts. The argument is 
not, u The Darwinian theory is the correct theory, and 
must therefore be accepted;" but, "In spite of all 
ecclesiastical fear, the Darwinian theory is not only not 
opposed to church-teachings, but really upholds them. 
Therefore we need not be afraid to receive it." 

In scientific investigation, consequences are not to 
be considered. Falsehood is alwa}^s dangerous : truth 
is always harmless. Where it seems to be injurious, it 
is more often the preceding and surrounding falsehood, 
than even the injudicious application of the truth, which 
works woe. This very Darwinian theory is a case in 
proof. No one knows whether it be true or false, or 
whether our theory of the Creator be true or false ; but, 
granting both to be true, the one is, as the writer quoted 
sa}^s, absolutely harmless to the other. It was supposed 
to be subversive of the divine Being only by those who 



12 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

did not comprehend the theory. But whether harmful 
or harmless is not the question. The only question is, 
What is truth ? It is irrelevant, it is mere charlantan- 
ism, to ask on what ground we shall receive views : if 
we find them sustained by the evidence, that is ground 
enough. The sole point is, are they sustained b} r the 
evidence? If they are, we must receive them, whether 
we like it or no, whether they subvert, or confirm, our 
theories. There is no choice in the matter. God is 
not the God of this world by sufferance, but by sove- 
reignty. He borrows no leave to be, from savant or 
saint. He cannot be volatilized out of his universe 
by chemical agency, nor kept in it by any labored 
harmony of the Gospels, or geology of Genesis. If he 
is here at all, he is here by his own will and act, and 
here to stay. 

One might say that the Darwinian theory had as few 
facts to stand on, and had to go as far to get them, as 
any theory ever framed by man ; but that is not to the 
purpose. 

Not entirely alike, yet not wholly dissimilar, is 
another paragraph from a religious review : — 

" The reduction of the biblical doctrine of the Devil 
to a mythical personification of evil, and of the 
account of the fall to a poetic representation, admits a 
principle of interpretation fatal alike to the historical 
and the moral weight of the Scriptures." 



THE IMPERIOUSNESS OF TRUTH. 13 

Here both the statement, and the principle which 
underlies it, may be questioned. It is by no means 
certain that an allegorical interpretation of the fall of 
man is fatal to the historical or moral weight of the 
Scriptures ; and, if it be, what of it? The issue is not, 
What becomes of the Bible if the Devil was a myth? 
but, Was the Devil a myth? It is not to be asserted 
that a story written in a certainly remote and a proba- 
bl} r indefinite past, in a country and among a people 
wholly different from our own, is to be understood pre- 
cisely as we should understand a story of America to- 
day. Nor is it to be denied that large portions of the 
Bible are poetical and literary, not scientific or meta- 
physical. Even its history is not the history of Hume 
and Gibbon. Language itself has changed significance 
in changing skies, and often puts us at loggerheads. 
The Devil, we all agree, got into the Bible by a myth ; 
and it is surely not unreasonable that he should go out 
the same way. The first account of the creation says 
nothing about the fall of man. The second says 
nothing about the Devil. The only Deus ex machine, 
is a serpent. That serpent cannot be turned into the 
Devil, except on the principle of poetic interpretation 
and nrythical personification. So we are not called 
upon to admit the principle. The principle is already 
there. " ' Nobody asked you, sir,' she said." 

This principle is more nearly vital than fatal to the 
2 



14 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

historical and moral weight of the Scriptures. I do 
not care particularly about the Devil. A bad man is 
a bad man, whether he is tempted of the Devil, or 
whether he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. 
It is rather satisfactory, on the whole, to have some 
one to lay the blame on besides ourselves. At any 
rate, Satan is under precisely the same laws as our- 
selves, and to be combated exactly as if he were a vile 
inclination or a bad habit. But on what principle do 
we in ninety-nine cases proffer an allegory as the true 
interpretation, and in the hundredth case not only 
deny the allegory, but decree that an allegorical theory 
would destroy the Bible? How can it be lawful to 
poetize a snake, and not onty unlawful, but revolution- 
ary, to poetize the tree he coiled on, according to the 
old pictures? We do not hesitate to accredit our 
Roman Catholic brethren with the woman sitting upon 
the scarlet beast of the Revelation. Why may we not 
use equal freedom towards the woman parleying with 
the serpent of Genesis? The seven heads and ten 
horns of the beast are not more suggestive of poetry 
than the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that 
springs in the garden. Who is it that says to poetry 
and parable, " Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther"? 
What sovereign commentator has announced, " Every 
story of the Bible thou mayst freely allegorize ; but 
the story of the Devil and the story of the Garden of 



THE IMPERIOUSNESS OF TRUTH. 15 

Eden thou shalt not allegorize ; for, in the day that 
thou touchest that, thou shalt surely die, and the Bible 
with thee"? 

When our creed declares that we hold all Scripture 
to be given by inspiration of God, every one yields 
ready assent : when it goes on immediately — as if the 
one thing were involved in the other — to constitute 
the Bible our complete rule of faith and practice, the 
only rule to direct us how we may glorify God and 
enjoy him, we do not always have our thoughts suffi- 
ciently about us to consider whether the second propo- 
sition is really implied in the first, or whether it is 
actually true, or what it definitely means. 

I suppose creeds are not framed for keeping people 
out of the Church, but, rather, to keep out heresy, to 
keep out dangerous theological falsehood. The bene- 
fit arising from church organization is so great, or 
must be assumed to be so great, that we surely ought 
to aim at bringing into the church-fold all who can be 
brought in with truth and honor. It will be agreed 
by every one, that we ought not to impose needless 
restraints, that we ought not to demand belief in 
statements of questionable purport and of doubtful 
authority. 

What does it amount to when we say that the Scrip- 
tures are our only sufficient rule of faith and practice ? 
They are not like a rule of arithmetic. They are not 



16 SERMONS TO TEE CLERGY. 

like a statute of law. These are, for the greater part, 
exact, and to be definitely applied. The only way in 
which the Scriptures furnish a rule is in supplying 
principles, in softening and purifying the heart, in 
tranquillizing the temper, in developing the conscience, 
and putting us in the right frame of mind to make a 
rule for ourselves. They furnish a rule, just as the 
quarry furnishes to the sculptor his angel : he must 
dig it out. When the Scriptures do give a rule, the 
first thing we do is to show how often it ought to be 
broken. The sacred writer makes a statement, and we 
at once turn to and prove beyond a doubt that he does 
not mean what he says. " Owe no man any thing but 
to love one another,' ' says Paul; but who refrains 
from borrowing money on that account? " Whoso- 
ever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him 
the other also," says Christ; but, if a man smite us, 
we prosecute him at the North, and knock him down at 
the South. u Swear not at all," said the same divine 
person ; and we not only swear, but hold that an oath 
is a peculiarly sacred and solemn thing. I do not say 
that we are contumacious or rebellious in doing thus ; 
but, so long as we are in fact chiefly a law unto our- 
selves, why do we pretend in our creeds to take the 
Scripture as our only rule of faith and practice ? 

We have a great theoretical dread of rationalism : 
nevertheless we do constantly bring our own reason to 



THE IMPERIOUSNESS OF TRUTH. 17 

bear upon the precepts of the Bible, The most con- 
scientious, the most devout, the most orthodox, does 
not make the Bible his only rule of faith and practice. 
He puts the Bible and his own common sense together ; 
and the two furnish him a rule. Why is it worse to 
say that we consider our own reason as authoritative 
as the Bible, than it is always to interpret and construe 
the Bible by our own reason? When the Bible con- 
tradicts our judgment, we do not obey the Bible, and 
fling our judgment to the winds : we follow our judg- 
ment, and say that the passage is obscure ; that it 
means something different from what it appears to 
mean. We explain it all away. We think we can get 
more truth out of witnesses, with oaths than without 
oaths: so when Christ said, "Swear not at all," we 
say that he only meant, swear not except in certain 
circumstances. When the Almighty says, "I loved 
Jacob, and I hated Esau," it conflicts with our ideas 
of what God ought to do ; and our most scrupulous 
commentators do not scruple to say that God did not 
really hate Esau, but only loved him less than he did 
Jacob. When God said unto the man, " In the day 
that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die," we 
affirm that he only meant that man should on that day 
become liable to death. What is this but making our 
human judgment paramount to Scripture ? 

This is precisely what the Bible authorizes us to 

2* 



18 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

do. I find no scriptural warrant for making the Bible 
our only rule of faith and practice ; but I find abundant 
warrant for making the Bible an authoritative reference- 
book for faith and practice ; and the human reason the 
proper and prescribed investigator. It may be, as is 
asserted, that the Westminster Confessions and Cate- 
chism, and the Thirty-nine Articles, and the Dord- 
recht Formulas, are unsurpassed as specimens of logical 
precision ; and, if what we wanted were perfect logical 
systems and statements, we might go farther, and fare 
worse. But what we want is not a perfect logical 
circle above our heads, but concrete divine truth in 
our hearts. Now, with all respect to the creed-makers, 
it seems to me that the Scriptures give a better account 
of themselves than any man has given of them. For 
displaying the origin and object of Scripture, its pre- 
cise relation to human life, its precise place in the 
divine economy, and its best showing in our creeds, 
I do not think Nice, Athanasius, Prelate, Pope, or 
Puritan has ever surpassed Paul. 

" All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and 
is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, 
for instruction in righteousness." 

There we have no iron-clad " rule," at once rigid and 
fragile, unbending, and therefore constantly breaking. 
It is a precise statement of the case, as broad and 
elastic as the truth itself, needing no explanation and 



THE IMPERIOUSNESS OF TRUTH. 19 

no supplement. It makes the Bible not a rule, but a 
repertory of wisdom, goodness, truth, and love, of 
divine principles, out of which we are to frame our own 
rules on our own responsibility. 

Even this great responsibility is not overwhelming. 
The human reason which is to work on the Bible, — that 
mere human reason which some flout at, and which 
many seem to look upon as an insidious foe, — that 
very reason has been much encouraged by these Sacred 
Scriptures. "There is a spirit in man; and the in- 
spiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding," 
says Elihu in the Book of Job. Only twice in the 
Bible is the word " inspiration " used. In both places, 
it is the inspiration of God. In one passage, inspira- 
tion gives us the Bible : in the other, it gives us under- 
standing. If it is said that Elihu, the son of Barachel 
the Buzite, is not as good authority as Paul, I can only 
say that the statement is one that can hardly be proved 
or disproved. It is certain that though Elihu waited, 
as was proper, being a young man, till the three friends 
had ceased to answer Job, yet, when he did speak, he 
was as vigorous and pointed and decisive as any of 
them. And though we are told that the anger of the 
Lord was kindled against the other three, and they 
were forced to humiliate themselves before Job, not a 
word of rebuke was passed upon Elihu. Does not this 
silence give assent? 



20 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

But we are not dependent upon Elihu's testimony. 
The Lord himself " answered Job out of the whirlwind, 
and said, Who hath put wisdom in the inward parts? 
or who hath given understanding to the heart? " im- 
plying more strongly than a mere assertion could that 
God himself gave understanding. Solomon tells us 
expressly, that out of the mouth of the Lord cometh 
knowledge and understanding ; that, to the man that is 
good in his sight, he giveth wisdom and knowledge and 
joy. " If any of you lack wisdom," says James, " let 
him ask of God that giveth to all men liberally, and it 
shall be given him." On what authority do we throw 
distrust and suspicion on the human reason, when God 
himself has so often and so kindly urged us to use it in 
studying his Word and himself? Why do we shorten 
his arm by asserting that the Bible is all we have to go 
by, when he has promised to shine directly into our 
own minds, and to let us know, if only we will follow 
on to know ? 

It is feared and asserted that a reference to human 
reason would open the door to all sorts of heresy ; that 
leaving out certain forms from our creeds would be 
bringing in certain other forms whose root is evil, and 
whose fruit is death. We must raise barriers against 
an " ever-restless, ever-developing, never-finished, pro- 
gressive theology." It will not do to confine ourselves 
to Bible statements, because Bible words do not mean 



THE IMPERIOUSNESS OF TRUTH. 21 

to people now-a-days the same that they meant to 
people when they were uttered. They have lost some- 
thing of their significance, of their solemnity. Words 
which meant then only one thing now mean whatever 
you choose. Explanation and interpretation have so 
perverted the sacred texts, that the Bible can no longer 
be trusted among the people unsupported, but must 
be bulwarked with gloss and comment, by — b}^ whom? 
One is just as far off as another from Bible times. 
Arians and Arminians, the dark ages and the renais- 
sance, heresy and schism, brood with equal gloom over 
us all. If the language of the Bible has been per- 
verted to almost any meaning that a pretentious ration- 
alizing may put upon it, how shall we know which of 
those meanings to incorporate into our creed as the 
true one? If the sacred writers confined themselves 
to simple statements, because their hearers were too 
near the facts to make any mistake, and if we are so 
far off that we are liable to great mistakes unless we 
have additional elaboration, formulated statements, 
inferences and systems lifted into the realm of funda- 
mental truth, in whom rests the authority to make 
these additions, and to formulate scriptural simplicity, 
and to say, once for all : This is what Christ meant, 
this is the real gist of Paul's words? Have we an 
apostle among us? The prophets, do they live forever? 
Where is that fountain of interpretation of which, if a 



22 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

man drink, he shall mistake no more? Who has had 
this supplementary inspiration, which not only illumin- 
ates the Scriptures to his own edification, but author- 
izes him to impose his interpretation as the condition 
of union with Christ's visible Church on earth ? 

No one will deny the claims of truth. Sharp and 
positive convictions are better than an indirTerentism 
naming itself with the name of liberality. Let the 
Presbyterians govern themselves by a synod, and the 
Congregationalists guide themselves by a council, and 
the Universalists stay in a church that believes God is 
too good to damn them, and the Unitarians in a church 
that believes they are too good to be damned. We 
need advocate no levelling of necessary barriers, no 
sentimental union of feebleness and fustian ; but if 
there are advantages in belonging to the Church, if the 
communion of saints, if the sacrament of the Lord's 
Supper, be a sacred and solemn privilege, we have no 
right to exclude from its participation those whom the 
Bible docs not exclude. Ye take too much upon }^ou, 
ye sons of Levi, when ye graff the wild olive-branches 
of your own conclusions into the good olive-tree of 
God's gospel, and call it all alike the vineyard of the 
Lord. 

Few of us who have read the story of Samson have 
not marvelled at the means which Samson took to 
avenge himself on his father-in-law. We can very 



THE IMPERTOUSNESS OF TRUTH. 23 

well believe that he carried off the gates of Gaza to the 
hill of Hebron ; for we have seen, in the picture, exactly 
how he did it. It is easy to understand that a thou- 
sand men should be slain by the jawbone of an ass ; for 
such slaughter is not wholly unknown to modern 
society. Any remarkable feat of strength may with 
impunity be ascribed to Samson ; but the capture of 
the three hundred foxes argues, besides superhuman 
strength, an " infernal activity." And when we ob- 
serve that these foxes were not only caught, as might 
be possible in a trap and in time, but were caught all 
at once, and were tied every one tail to tail, and that a 
burning firebrand was secured firmly in the midst 
between every two tails, — so firmly that a good many 
of the foxes must have run a considerable distance 
before the brand dropped off, if it dropped off at all, — 
it must be admitted that very large draughts are made 
on the childlike faith. For what motive had Samson ? 
To catch three hundred foxes, and tie firebrands to 
their tails in order to set your neighbors' cornfields on 
fire, savors of the Western mode of preventing mos- 
quito-bites ; viz., to catch your mosquito, give him 
chloroform, and extract his teeth. It would seem 
easier to burn up every cornfield in Massachusetts with 
flint and steel than to catch a hundred foxes, not to 
mention fastening a firebrand between their tails. Was 
Samson afraid to go into the cornfields ? But did he 



24 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

not have to forage after the foxes quite as extensively? 
Would not the same cunning, agility, and strength 
which could capture, collect, accoutre, and despatch 
three hundred foxes, have enabled him to slip into as 
many cornfields, and set fire to them all? 

It is amusing to see how nimble our commentators 
become in the chase of those three hundred foxes. 
The foxes turn into jackals at the first clip. The cap- 
tor is furnished with a pair of mittens little less than 
miraculous. He is allowed as many assistants as the 
case may require. The foxes, become jackals, are sent 
over the country in swarms. Samson is granted an 
indefinite extension of time . The Greek term ' 4 jackal," 
we are told, means nimble; and the Persian jackal is a 
glotvinff coaL The red fox has a tail like a burning 
torch; and the Greek word "fox" means " a bright, 
burning tail." Ovid, in his Festival of the Cere alia, and 
the Feast of Yulpinaria, and the tradition of the glow- 
worm carrying fire, all point back to the fire-foxes of the 
Philistines. What with fable, et3^mology, and natural 
history, we become bewildered, and, in the confusion of 
law and legend, find ourselves quite ready to welcome 
that learned Hebraist who rises to explain that some 
little quirk of a letter, some little dubious twist in the 
tail of a comma, has made those foxes out of a shock of 
corn, and sent them clattering across our common sense 
through all these hundreds of years. It was not foxes 



THE IMPERIOUSNESS OF TRUTH. 25 

that Samson caught. He simply gathered shocks, 
sheaves, bundles of corn, and such combustible matter, 
fastened them together, and set the fire leaping across 
the field, to the destruction of both shocks and stand- 
ing corn, vineyards and olives. It was what any 
shrewd Danish " fire-bug" might have done, — to our 
nineteenth-century sense, a perfectly natural way of 
setting the farms on fire. We are willing those three 
hundred foxes should rest in peace ; and for us, before 
we fash ourselves with strange stories, we will look to 
our P's and Q's. 

In the laws given to the Israelites, after they had 
left the land of Egypt, we find the stern sentence, 
11 Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live ; " in obedience 
to which mandate, thousands of men and women — the 
offscouring of the earth, and saints of whom the world 
was not worthy — have suffered death at the hands of 
men. Massachusetts has, I believe, the honor of 
having first reared the standard of rebellion and revolt 
against the devil of persecution, of torture, and of 
death ; and that devil she cast out. But, before he 
went, he so tore and bruised her, that the world remem- 
bers only how the evil spirit foamed and raged, and 
remembers not that the foaming and raging were be- 
cause she withstood him to the face, and crushed him 
down, and cast him out. So her good is evil spoken 
of. But Giles Corey bore the peine forte et dure; and 
3 



26 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

the venerable white hairs of that saintliest of women, 
Rebecca Nourse, floated from the gallows-tree ; and the 
Rev. Mr. Burroughs was torn from wife and babies in 
the wilderness, and doomed to the felon's death, — 
because, far back in the twilight of time, a Thus saith 
the Lord had rung out through the smoke of Sinai, and 
reverberated over the plains and the desert: " Thou 
shalt not suffer a witch to live." Now comes up a wise 
man of the East, and joins hand with sundry wise men of 
the West, and all jointly and severally declare that the 
true rendering and reading is, "Thou shalt not suffer 
a witch to get her living." The Most High did not 
command his people to do to death .these wizards and 
witches ; but he forbade them to allow the trade of 
necromancy to be carried on in their community. 

The dead cannot rise from their graves to receive or 
to give atonement ; and, long before this, I trust that the 
Rev. Mr. Parrish has found dust enough on the golden 
streets to bestrew his garments of repentance for the 
children whom he led astray, and the men and women 
he hunted down. Long before this, I trust, have the 
torture, the ignominy, and the shame which wrought 
the death, and shrouded the grave, of Rebecca Nourse, 
been lost in the light and glory of heaven. But, for all 
the living, there is hope that the lesson of our fathers' 
mistake may not be lost. 

It is of very little consequence in itself whether 



THE IMPERIOUSNESS OF TRUTH. 27 

sheaves, or foxes, set fire to the Philistine vineyards. It 
is not of the first importance, whether, in one particular 
passage, a witch was commanded to be slain, or to be 
forbidden the practice of her arts ; for there are other 
passages of similar purport. It concerned Abram 
chiefly, whether the Moreh to which he passed were a 
burning, perhaps arid, plain, or a sheltering and restful 
oak. There is authority for both. The point is, that, 
on certain words of Holy Writ, men of learning and 
piety differ so widely as to change the whole meaning 
of statement and command, — differ, in at least one 
instance, by all the distance that stretches between life 
and death. How unwise is it, then, how unscientific, 
how impious, to pin our faith upon a word ! How 
absurd to make the gates of heaven swing or shut to 
any open sesame which one, or close sesame which 
another, may think himself to have found in the Bible ! 
How derogatory is it to the divine Being to suppose 
that he would make salvation turn upon any one or two, 
or a dozen, interpretations in a book, when a dozen 
other interpretations are admitted to be so doubtful 
that the world cannot agree upon their truth ! If, when 
the Bible speaks of so simple a thing as a fox, I am 
expected to believe it means a jackal, and am not a 
heretic if I think it means a shock of corn, why shall 
I bar from heaven, and from the table of our Lord on 
earth, my brother who cannot understand that u bap- 



28 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

tism" in the Bible means " immersion," or my brother 
who cannot comprehend what the word ' 4 trinity ' ' 
means, which is not in the Bible at all? If some scrip- 
tural words are vital, and other words are not vital, then 
we need a supplementary revelation to tell us which 
are the vital words. From the simple fact that the 
revealed word of God is dotted with statements, which, 
whether from lapse of time, or change of language and 
manners, are to us practically incomprehensible, I 
rather infer that intellectual comprehension of theo- 
logical truth is not essential to salvation, but that, 
44 in every nation, he that feareth God, and worketh 
righteousness, is accepted with him." 

I do not suppose we have departed any farther from 
the faith once delivered to the saints than the divine 
Being knew we should depart. When he inspired the 
sacred writers, he knew just as well what the perver- 
sions of a pretentious rationalism would do with the 
words as our modern theologians know what it has 
done with them. And if he still let the words stand 
as symbols of faith, and tests of piety, cannot we afford 
to let them stand ? Perhaps the ark of God is not so 
unsteady as it seems. Perhaps it will not topple over, 
even if we leave it to its own divine strength. It has 
■ been brought forward as one great proof of the divine 
origin of the Bible, that it was not confined to one age 
and one people, but was adapted to all ages and all 



THE IMPERIOUSNESS OF TRUTH. 29 

peoples. What becomes of this miraculous adapta- 
tion, if it must be supplemented and interpreted and 
appendixed, and generally pieced out and filled in, 
before it can safely be trusted as a lamp unto our feet 
and a light unto our path? Christ himself says, 
" Whosoever believeth in me shall never die." But we 
have discovered that men may say they believe, and yet 
say nothing ; may call Christ the Son of God, and yet 
mean nothing. Therefore we are not contented that 
they should confess Christ before men. We will not 
even let them simply confess Christ before men. We 
build up a wall of logical precision, and verbal exact- 
ness, and metaphysical distinction, and say that any 
man that entereth by the door into the sheepfold, and 
climbeth not up this way, " the same is a thief and a 
robber." Would it not be better, like Christ, to put a 
generous construction on men's motives, to believe that 
he who is not positively against Christ is on his part ; 
that, if a man cares enough about Christ to believe in 
him in any sort of way, he will not lightly speak evil 
of him ; that, if he calls him the Son of God, he cer- 
tainly means nothing bad ? He may be yet far off from 
the full assurance of faith. He may see the Lord only 
through a glass Yery darkly ; but why is he to be treated 
as a hypocrite, a pretender, and a foe, to be barred out 
with formula and exegesis, to be unmasked and ex- 
posed, as it were, and not rather welcomed in, though 
3* 



30 SERMONS TO TEE CLERGY. 

u not to doubtful disputations " ? Is not a man more 
likely to be built up in the faith inside than outside the 
Church? How, then, can the salvation of the world be 
furthered by multiplying tests beyond those which God 
himself laid down ? If Christ could trust the general 
honesty of human nature in confessing him, why 
cannot we? 

And why is an " ever-restless, ever-developing, 
never-finished, progressive theology " a thing to be 
guarded against? Has any man, or any school of 
theologians, ever found out the Almighty unto perfec- 
tion? A very high authority, long ago, declared, that, 
" touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out." If 
he be indeed infinite, must not the science that treats of 
him, unless it is a dead science, be u ever-restless, ever- 
developing, never-finished, and progressive " ? It will 
make a thousand mistakes ; but the greatest mistake 
which theology can make is to fold its hands, cease 
to develop, cease to progress, and say, " It is finished." 
All the ages and all the worlds may strive, by search- 
ing, to find out God ; and though the search is most 
blissful in process, and most blessed in results, always 
behind it remains the Almighty, forever found by the 
sincere seeker, yet forever and forever to be sought. 



ADAM. 




ADAM. 

DAM'S fall is a very discouraging circum- 
stance. 

All the machinery of life aims to bring 
man into a state of moral excellence. Churches, 
schools, newspapers, are to make him good and wise. 
The great obstacle is, that he has in himself so much 
bad blood, and is surrounded by circumstance so un- 
toward. A child seems to be made up of the traits of 
many generations. He gets brightness from his 
mother, deception from his father, a furious temper 
from one, self-restraint from another, indolence from a 
third, and a thousand little strains of strength and 
weakness which once variegated the lives of ancestors 
whom living eye has never seen, and who sleep in 
forgotten graves. One propensity we try to curb, one 
tendency to develop. We do not expect to accomplish 
great things with the generation now on the stage ; 
but, if we can only get this rising race started fair, we 
have great expectations of the race that shall come 
from them. Weak and wicked parents make weak and 

33 



34 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

wicked children. Given one generation of upright, 
noble, healthy men and women, and the world is fairly 
started on its career of reform. 

But, when you have secured your noble men and 
women, you are, at the farthest, only where we started 
six thousand years ago. Churches and schools, family 
training and piety, have produced, let us say, the 
upright generation ; but it is no better than was Adam. 
Adam was upright and noble. He inherited no bad 
blood, no weak trait. No stern father, no indulgent 
mother, helped to spoil him. No society flattered and 
fooled him. He was a perfect and holy man. God 
was his teacher and intimate friend. All his powers 
were balanced, all his faculties in harmony, all his 
wants natural, all his tastes innocent. Yet, at the first 
touch of temptation, down he went, and all the genera- 
tions with him. 

And it was no great temptation, either. If it were 
proper, and to the purpose, one could find it in his 
heart to be thoroughly angry with Adam for bringing 
us into our estate of sin and misery on such slight 
provocation. Adam's descendants, all degenerate as 
they are, resist a thousand stronger temptations every 
day. There are many sins into which it is hardly sur- 
prising that a man should fall. When the appetite for 
wine has once taken firm hold of him, the wonder is, 
that he should ever dispossess himself of it. It is not 



ADAM. 35 

incomprehensible that men and women will sacrifice 
wealth, ambition, even honor, to love ; for love is a 
passion so absorbing, so overpowering, that judgment 
and reason ma} T be held captive in its thrall. It is in- 
conceivable that a man should commit fraud to gratify 
a love of display and self-indulgence ; but it is not 
inconceivable that he should commit forgery to conceal 
fraud, and commit suicide to escape the penalty of 
forgery. But Adam had nothing that was worthy the 
name of temptation ; and he had every thing else. 
There was his wife made on purpose for him, and made 
out of his own flesh and blood ; so that he could not 
find fault with her. There was no other woman exist- 
ing to be compared with her to her disadvantage, or 
to make it possible for him to think he might have 
done better. No overweening appetite tempted him, 
for he had perfect liberty and perfect likings, except 
in one direction ; and there is nothing to indicate that 
he ever so much as looked in that direction of his own 
accord. He had not a single want or wish ungratified ; 
and all his gratification was moderate, reasonable, and 
wholesome, — as salutary in effect as it was pure in 
enjoyment. He was called upon to crucify no natural 
propensity, to exercise no form of self-denial. The 
forbidden tree was pleasant to the eyes, and good for 
food ; but so was every tree in the garden. There was 
no reason why he should wish to eat of this tree, except 



36 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

that the Lord God had told him not to. And this Lord 
God was no tjTant, no mere far-off unseen monarch 
even, but a familiar friend in whom he trusted, who 
had given him all things richly to enjoy, who had 
brought all the creatures of the earth to him to ac- 
knowledge fealty, and talked with him as a man talketh 
with his friend. Now, I believe, that, all fallen and 
sinful as we are, there are thousands of men and 
women on the earth to-day who would stand such a 
test, and call it nothing. They would do, even for an 
earthly friend, for friendship's sake, what Adam would 
not do for the sake of the Lord God. Every boy who 
gives up smoking to please his father and mother re- 
sists a temptation infinitely stronger than that which 
beset Adam. For, let it be always remembered, Adam 
was not hankering after the forbidden fruit. There is 
nothing to show that he had even so much as thought of 
it, or was any thing but indifferent to it, when up came a 
beast of the field, and suggested to Adam and Eve that 
they should try it. That was all. One would say a 
thousand beasts of the field might have beset them, 
a thousand serpents hissed out suggestions, in vain. 
What was a serpent in comparison with the Lord 
God ? Adam knew perfectly well that the beasts of 
the field were inferior to himself ; for he had been set 
to have dominion over them. He could not, of course, 
comprehend the Almighty ; but he knew enough to 



ADAM. 37 

know that he was Sovereign, sovereignly good and 
wise, and to be revered, obeyed, and adored. Yet 
upon the first suggestion of an irresponsible, unhelp- 
ing, slanderous serpent, they disregarded his wishes, — 
I will not say disobeyed his commands, — apparently 
without the smallest compunction, misgiving, or re- 
morse, as simply, coolly, and heartlessly as if they had 
been used to disobedience ever since they were cre- 
ated. Veterans in faithlessness could hardly have 
done worse. 

Now, if these things are done in a green tree, what 
shall be done in a dry? If Adam, pure, perfect, holy, 
with no acquired weakness from habit, with no treach- 
ery of inherited traits, with no temptation fromungrat- 
ified wants, and no promptings of pride, could thus 
wantonly fall into the first silly sin that he could 
stumble upon, how shall the present generation, all 
borne down with the weight of accumulated crime, 
enervated by centuries of weakness and vice, beset by 
temptations that Adam never knew or dreamed of, — 
how shall such a generation even think of maintaining 
itself upright? How can we be expected to stand 
where Adam fell? And suppose we do stand, suppose 
we do secure an upright generation, what guaranty 
have we that it will not, upon the second temptation, 
lapse into vice, repeat the ruin of Adam, and so give 
us all our work to do over again ? What hinders the 
4 



38 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

world's progress from being at best but a perpetual 
moral see-saw — now up, next down? And what 
encouragement have we to help a man to his feet, 
when his first act after he gains them is to fall flat 
upon the ground again? 

Is there not somewhere a flaw in our exegesis? 
Simply considered as literature and history, it might 
well be that the story of Genesis had not yielded up 
its gem of the ages to our strictest research. Learn- 
ing, logic, and piet} r have striven to unfold its secret, 
and, for all answer, we have only conflict and clashing. 
It is easier to say what cannot be the true meaning 
than what the true meaning must be. Certainty an 
interpretation which contradicts the ordinary notions 
of sense and justice must have a good deal to say for 
itself, before it can be received as a veracious history, 
or a true philosophy, of the ways of God to man. A 
theory which starts out with the statement, that, 

" In Adam's fall 
We sinned all," 

it cannot be irreverent or profane to question. 

If a man in New York or Boston had grown up vir- 
tuous, amiable, and honorable, and in his mature 
years, with a happy family surrounding him and 
depending on him, should suddenly steal a million dol- 
lars from the desk of his best friend, not because he 



ADAM. 39 

was in need of money, or had an}^ special desire for it, 
but because a veteran pickpocket had suggested to him 
that he should, we should say the man had lost his 
mental balance, that he was beginning to have soften- 
ing of the brain. If we read the story in the reporter's 
column of the morning paper, we should say, "What 
absurd stories these newspapers invent, now that the 
war and the panic are over ! " But Adam had a better 
character than any bank president ; and, where the 
defaulting cashier brings onl} T his own family to grief, 
Adam dragged down with him a whole world. The 
great comfort in doing moral work is, that, once done, 
it stays done. The United States is not in the smallest 
danger of lapsing into Druidism. The vices of the 
freedman and the Indian, we say, are the vices engen- 
dered of long years of slavery and barbarism. After a 
few successive generations of freedom, education, and 
religion, we shall see that the one is not incapable of 
self-government, nor the other of civilization. Moral 
inertia is as strong as physical inertia. No man 
plunges at once from the heights of virtue to the 
depths of vice. It is not the man of wise prudence, 
self-restraint, large views, enlightened conscience, and 
liberal mind, who slaj's his opponent, even in a 
moment of passion. It is the man, who, however fair 
to far-seeing, is within weakened by self-indulgence. 
He only falls at a sudden blow, because his props were 



40 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

never well set. The crash of disaster may be sudden ; 
but a long series of secret crimes, weaknesses, and 
selfishnesses, led up to it. 

If, then, our theory be correct, — that Adam was 
created holy, and that he fell, at the first comparatively 
slight temptation, into iniquity and irreparable ruin, — 
it would seem that he must have been very differently 
constituted from any of his descendants. As vast 
numbers of his descendants, in their fallen state, do 
resist many and grievous temptations, and as Adam, 
in his unf alien state, created in the image of God, in 
knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, according to 
the Westminster Catechism, never resisted any, it 
seems to follow that an estate of knowledge, righteous- 
ness, and holiness, is less favorable to goodness than 
is an estate of sin and mis v ery. 

But is not that a conclusion in which nothing is con- 
cluded ? 

There is a theory that Adam was not positively holy, 
but negatively innocent ; that he had perfect moral 
purity, but not moral strength. That may be ; but 
that makes him a man in physical and mental powers, 
while morally a baby. If that be the true theory, then 
it seems hardty fair to have made Adam the represen- 
tative man of the race. Ordinarily the moral faculty, 
though opening later than the other faculties, arrives 
far sooner at maturity. Adam's descendants have 



ADAM. 41 

usually a very clear sense of right and wrong, long 
before they have a very correct sense of what is wise 
or unwise, prudent and imprudent. But, if Adam was 
created with mind and body fully developed while his 
moral sense was infantile, he was so different from the 
rest of mankind, that it is not just to bring them all to 
destruction because he fell : it is not just that the fate 
of a whole race, whose moral powers ordinarilj r keep 
pace with its mental and physical powers, should be 
put to the test of the only man in it whose moral 
power was created organicalty weaker and tardier than 
his other powers. A chain is no stronger than its 
weakest link ; but, when we would strengthen the 
chain, we do not begin by reducing every link to the 
weakness of the weakest. 

If the answer to a question in addition do not 
" prove," we try it over again. The very number and 
earnestness of the solutions which have been given to 
this problem indicate that the answer will not 
" prove." But the record of an event so august as 
the foundation of a world has been thought worthy 
the closest study, the most continuous attention, and 
is full of the deepest interest. 

The story of Genesis can hardly be intended as a 
literal scientific statement. " The Lord God planted a 
garden. And out of the ground made the Lord God 
to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and 

4* 



42 SERMONS TO TEE CLERGY. 

good for food." But could any one garden contain 
every kind of tree to be found in every sort of climate, 
— in torrid, temperate, and frigid zones? " The tree 
of life, also, in the midst of the garden, and the tree of 
knowledge of good and evil." What sort of trees are 
these ? What nurseryman has ever had the seedlings ? 
What gardener has ever eaten the fruit ? We find our- 
selves, at the very outset, palpably and unquestionably 
in the midst of an allegory. Something mysterious 
and uncomprehended, whether or not incomprehensi- 
ble, is represented as the tree of life, planted in the 
garden where man entered upon his active career. In 
the holy city, the New Jerusalem, whither this world 
leads and leaves him, the same mysterious tree blooms 
down the centre of the golden street, and shadows the 
banks of the river of life, yields every month its teem- 
ing fruitage, and offers even its " leaves for the healing 
of the nations." 

Was it a literal plot of land in Asia that bore this 
tree? And the tree of knowledge of good and evil — - 
does it spring in any earthy soil ? Is it propagated by 
grafting ? Is it nurtured by irrigation ? Is it blighted 
by early frost ? Does it grow side by side with apples 
and apricots ? We see at once that the idea is absurd. 
These are allegorical trees, symbolical trees ; and, if 
they are allegorical, the garden in which they are 
planted, the whole story in which they are found, not 



ADAM. 43 

only may be, but must be presumed to be, allegorical. 
It is contrary alike to the laws of literature and of 
sound reason, that an allegorical tree should be 
planted in an agricultural garden. 

What we cannot fail to notice in the story of Gene- 
sis is, that the Lord God said to Adam, " Of the tree 
of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat 
of it ; for, in the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt 
surely die." But the serpent said, u Ye shall not 
surely die ; for God doth know, that in the day }^e eat 
thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be 
as gods, knowing good and evil." 

And the serpent was right about it. Adam and Eve 
ate the fruit, and they did not die, as the Lord God 
said they would ; but their eyes were opened, and they 
knew good and evil, just as the serpent had predicted. 
The serpent, apparently, spoke more truly than the 
Lord God. No wonder the narrative affirms the ser- 
pent to have been more subtle than an} T beast of the 
field which the Lord God had made. I suspect the 
serpent himself honestly believed what he was saying. 
He knew a great deal ; but he did not know every 
thing. Adam and Eve seem to have been like two 
children, — frank, innocent, ignorant, unsuspicious, 
fearless. The serpent was far superior to them in 
intelligence and experience ; but, when he undertook 
to measure himself against the Almighty, he sank into 



44 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

abject insignificance. It looks as if he knew what 
death was, and he knew what was the tree of the 
knowledge of good and evil ; and he knew what were 
its apparent, superficial, immediate consequences. 
But its deeper, more remote, most vital consequences, 
he did not know. He evidently thought the Lord God 
was jealous of his prerogatives ; that he did not wish 
Adam and Eve to become like himself in knowledge of 
good and evil, and so was frightening them off with 
a warning of consequences which would never follow. 
But the serpent meant mischief. Out of pure malice, 
he meant to get Adam and Eve into trouble ; or 
perhaps, in revenge or hatred of the Lord God, he 
would set Adam and Eve in a more godlike place than 
their Maker intended. The only death which his sen- 
sual mind comprehended, he knew was not a natural 
result of eating of the tree of the knowledge of good 
and evil. The result which would follow — and the 
only result of which he was aware — was a perception 
hitherto to them unknown, and a perception which the 
Lord God had not intended them to have, and which, 
the serpent thought, would thwart the divine plans, 
and chagrin the Lord God. He himself turned out to 
be the one who was thwarted and baffled and cha- 
grined ; yet he had laid his plans well. His failure 
was because he only saw things on the surface, and 
could not pursue them into the depths. If there had 



ADAM. 45 

not been to death a deeper meaning than he knew any 
thing about, if there had not been in the knowledge of 
good and evil a higher life than he could divine, he 
would have been right. To the short-sighted eyes of 
wickedness, the far-off truth seems a present falsehood. 

One of the most remarkable features of the narra- 
tive, one that has received far less prominence than its 
character merits, and one that seems full of signifi- 
cance, if we could but find the key to unlock it, is the 
assertion of the Lord God, " Behold, the man is become 
as one of us, to know good and evil : and now, lest he 
put forth his hand, and take, also, of the tree of life, 
and eat, and live forever ; therefore the Lord God sent 
him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground 
from whence he was taken." 

That was precisely what the serpent said. What 
the serpent said would happen, the Lord God declared 
had happened. But what was this wondrous change ? 
And why should the Lord God be angry about it, or 
have forbidden it in the first place ? It would seem as 
if the change was a very elevating and a very desira- 
ble one, — a change from a low to a higher state of 
being. This man was become more like God. But 
he was made, at first, in the image of God : therefore, 
we should say, the more he became like God the better. 
Why should the Lord God object to any act which 
could make man more like himself? And what was 



46 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

this knowledge of good and evil, of which man had 
suddenly become possessed ? He knew good before ; 
for he had felt it all through his happy life. It can 
hardly mean that he was to know evil in the sense of 
doing or suffering evil ; for he was to know it as the 
Lord God knows it, who is incapable of either. And 
what was that tree of life which once brought immor- 
tality within human grasp ? The tree had been in the 
garden from the beginning ; and it does not seem that 
Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat of it. It is, 
indeed, mentioned as the tree which was in the midst 
of the garden ; and the woman declared that it was the 
fruit of the tree which was in the midst of the garden, 
of which God had said, " Ye shall not eat of it, neither 
shall ye touch it, lest ye die." But, in the direct com- 
mand of God himself, nothing is said of the tree of 
life. The prohibition applies only to the tree of knowl- 
edge of good and evil. Was it, then, that they had 
eaten of the tree of life, but that its effects were but 
temporary ; that immortality could come only from 
continuous partaking of its mystic fruit ; that the long 
lives of Adam and Seth and Methuselah resulted 
from the fruit of the tree of life which Adam had eaten 
in the garden, — a fruit whose lingering virtue length- 
ened out even the days of Abraham and Joseph, but 
dwindled, and presently disappeared, till the human 
organization had nothing to depend on but its own 



ADAM. 47 

unaided force, and finds now its limit at threescore 
years and ten? It would seem, then, that man was 
not originally and inherently immortal. He was made 
liable to death, but susceptible of life. He would 
naturally die ; but, by the use of certain means, he had 
a frame that could live forever. If he had not par- 
taken of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he 
might still have fed on the tree of life, and have lived 
forever ; but he would have lived in that lower estate 
in which he was created. He would never have been 
like God, knowing good and evil. Here is where the 
reverend assembly of divines at Westminster must have 
been plumply and squarely wrong. They were wise 
above what is written. They were not content with 
the simple Scripture statement, that God made man 
"in our image, after our likeness." They gave no 
heed to the subsequent modifications, which showed 
how far the statue varied from its model. They say, 
" God created man after his own image, in knowledge, 
righteousness, and holiness." The writer of Genesis 
does not say one word about God's having created 
man like himself in knowledge, righteousness, or holi- 
ness. The only thing he says about it is, that, in one 
whole department of knowledge, man was created 
unlike God ; and the only way he got in was by rushing 
in, in spite of God. His very fall consisted in leaving 
the estate of ignorance in which he had been created, 



48 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

and trespassing upon an estate of knowledge in which 
he had not been created. But this estate of knowl- 
edge was one in which the Lord God dwelt ; and it 
could not, therefore, have been of itself guilty or un- 
desirable. Adam's fault was, not in being in it, but in 
going in when he was commanded to stay out. Yet, 
thrusting himself forward all unbidden, he did not, 
thereby, wholly forfeit all the advantages of the estate. 
The fruit of the tree was potent. His eyes were 
opened, and he did know good and evil, and he did 
become as God. We have the lowest authority in the 
universe foretelling that this is what would happen, 
and the highest authority in the universe asserting that 
this is what did happen. The serpent knew a great 
deal more about the tree of the knowledge of good and 
evil than we know ; but there was so much that he did 
not know, that his knowledge was not of the smallest 
account. No created being seems to have fathomed 
the secret of the Almighty. 

It does not seem certain, when we look at it care- 
fully, that God was even angry with Adam and Eve 
for thus clothing themselves with the attributes of the 
Most High. Their banishment from the garden is 
alleged to be, not by way of penalty, but of precaution. 
They were expelled, not for any thing they had done, 
but for something which it was feared they would do. 
u And now, lest he put forth his hand, and take of 



ADAM. 49 

the tree of life, and eat, and live forever: therefore, 
the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of 
Eden." Even the divine unwillingness that man, 
after his disobedience should eat of the tree of life, 
and live forever, may have been divine compassion, 
and not displeasure. An immortality that would have 
been forever fresh and fair and sweet in the garden 
of Eden might be a burden too heavy to be borne out- 
side. It is not the least solace of a life whose sorrows 
are greatly multiplied, and whose toils are often exces- 
sive, that its troubles are limited. One man of genius 
represents death as the poor man's dearest friend, the 
kindest and the best. Another pictures to himself 
the consternation that would ensue in the world, if 
death were suddenly abolished. The woes entailed 
upon the human race by that mysterious and awful 
comprehension of good and evil are lifted and light- 
ened by the certain knowledge that the time is short, 
or, if not by the knowledge, certainly by the fact. 
Sin cannot grow hoary ; for the sinner returns to the 
dust ; and out of the dust comes each living soul with 
something of primal innocence about it. Suffering 
does not on earth annihilate the power to enjoy ; for 
aching brow and throbbing pulse find peace and rest in 
the ever-welcoming grave. 

It may be noticed, also, that a very different tone 
is assumed toward Adam and Eve from that which is 
5 



50 SERMONS TO TEE CLERGY. 

assumed toward the serpent. To the latter the Lord 
God says, " Thou art cursed." To Adam he says, 
" Cursed is the ground for thy sake." When Cain 
afterwards killed his brother, the Lord said unto him, 
" Now art thou cursed. Lamech observed the dis- 
tinction, and knows no curse upon man, but comforts 
himself concerning our work and toil of our hands, 
because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed. 

It was the ground, and not the man, who was cursed. 
Nay, the ground was cursed for the man's sake. Is 
not the phrase, " For my sake," oftener a friendly 
than an unfriendly phrase ? Is not the necessity of 
industry everywhere and always recognized as the 
almost indispensable condition of excellence ? Is not 
idleness denounced, and justly denounced, as the fruit- 
ful mother, and the untiring foster-mother, of vice? 
And seeing that man had presumptively, rashly, but 
really, drawn upon himself the immeasurable responsi- 
bility of the knowledge of good and evil, did not God, 
in love and kindness, curse the ground for his sake, 
render it necessary that man should toil, and by his 
toil be disciplined and trained into a fitness for the 
station into which he had thrust himself, all ignorant, 
untrained, unfit? That absolute ease and luxury in 
which Adam lived before he had any knowledge of 
good and evil did not hurt him. After that godlike 
knowledge came to him, it would have been fatal. A 



ADAM. 51 

baby plays with his toes and his toys through all his 
waking hours ; but, when he becomes a man, he puts 
away childish things. 

Nor does it appear afterwards that God was angry 
with Adam, or alienated from him, or that Adam and 
his family and friends and descendants fell under 
God's wrath and curse. And when the reverend 
assembly of divines at Westminster declare that " all 
mankind, by the fall, lost communion with God, are 
under his wrath and curse, and so made liable to the 
miseries in this life, to death itself, and to the pains of 
hell forever," they must go far for authority. How 
they could make such a statement with the Book of 
Genesis before their eyes is incomprehensible. 

For, immediately after the fall, before Adam and 
Eve were sent out of the garden, the Lord God made 
coats of skin, and clothed them. He took pit}^ upon 
their shame ; he was touched by their simple, awkward, 
clumsy efforts to clothe themselves ; he did not wait 
for them to learn by cold and fatigue the insufficiency 
and fragility of the poor, perishable garments they had 
stuck together : but he put them himself on the right 
track. He made for them himself strong and decorous 
coats, clothes that would stand the rain and storm and 
toil that awaited them outside of Eden, garments that 
could serve them till their progress in art and skill 
should produce better. Does this look as if they were 



52 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

under God's wrath and curse ? What could he have 
done different, if they had been under his pity and 
care and love ? 

When Eve's first baby was born, she cried in rapture, 
" I have gotten a man from the Lord." That is hardly 
the cry of a woman whose whole nature was corrupt, 
and who was cut off from communion with God. It 
seems, rather, as if Eve were still living close to the 
Lord God, and attributed this new, strange blessing at 
once to him. 

" And the Lord had respect unto Abel." And the 
Lord talked with Cain. " And Enoch walked with 
God." " And Noah was a just man, and perfect in his 
generations ; and Noah walked with God." And God 
talked with Noah, and " blessed Noah and his sons." 
And all through the book comes a long line of men 
whom God talked with, and bore with, and labored 
with, and taught and directed, and blessed and com- 
forted. And the reverend assembly of divines at West- 
minster, with this long record of love and patience in 
their hands, could put their heads together, and declare 
that all mankind, by the fall, lost communion with God, 
and are under his wrath and curse. Worse than that, 
if any thing can be worse, in our own National Council 
that met in Boston, there was not found a man to vin- 
dicate the ways of God to man ; but " all we, like sheep, 
went astray" after the Westminster divines, and de- 



ADAM. 53 

clared our adherence for substance of doctrine to the 
faith and order which the synods of 1648 and 1680 set 
forth or re-affirmed. 

As between the theological assertions of the West- 
minster Assembly of Divines, and those of any other 
body of divinity, it is doubtless proper to go with the 
Westminster Assembly ; but where the issue is between 
the Westminster Assembly on one side, and Moses 
and the prophets on the other, I should go decidedly 
with Moses. Much as we esteem the Catechism, we 
esteem the Pentateuch more. The Book of Genesis, 
whether we accept it as authority or not, is all the 
authority we have concerning the origin of the human 
race. That book tells us that continually, after the 
fall as well as before the fall, God did lovingly and 
patiently and unwearyingly talk with man, lead him 
along pleasant paths, and over hard places, rebuke and 
punish him when he was wicked, praise and reward 
him when he was even a little good, encourage him 
when he was weary, strengthen him when he was feeble, 
and in all ways and places show himself a father and a 
friend ; so that after all these years, in these remote 
corners of the earth, one cannot read the story without 
an amazement, almost an incredulity of gratitude ; 
without exclaiming, u What is man, that thou shouldst 
be so mindful of him ? ' * 

When any one says, on the other hand, that, after 

4* 



54 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

the fall, man lost communion with God, and fell 
under his wrath and curse, I ask, with all respect, for 
his authority. I ask, also, if there is any such author- 
ity, why it was not incorporated into the book, — the 
only book that professes to give a connected and com- 
plete account of the creation? 

A recent book discusses the story of Adam and Eve 
from an entirely novel point of sight. It is called 
' ' The Rise and the Fall ; or, The Origin of Moral Evil.'' 
Its explanation is one that I should never have thought 
of; yet, once presented, it is a theory of which one does 
not easily beconie disembarrassed. The book is written 
in a reverent and rational spirit. It professes as close 
an adherence to the text of Scripture as to the rules 
of right reasoning ; and the magnitude of the problem 
to be solved, the unsatisfactoriness of all attempts 
hitherto at its solution, and the earnestness and intelli- 
gence which this writer brings to the discussion, cer- 
tainly merit for it a fair hearing, and not a summary 
dismission. 

His theory is, that the tree of the knowledge of good 
and evil was the tree of the knowledge of right and 
wrong ; that Adam and Eve were not originally created 
with such knowledge. Their mental perceptions, their 
physical powers, were in full play ; but the moral faculty 
was in abeyance, corresponding to its later appear- 
ance in every subsequent individual of the human race. 



ADAM. 55 

The probability is, that they were intended to be 
endowed at some future time — and after whatever 
necessary training, under whatever favorable circum- 
stances — with this moral faculty ; but, at the time of 
their creation, they were not so endowed. By their 
disobedience, which could not be guilty (they not being 
moral creatures) , but which was rash and imprudent, 
they became prematurely possessed of the moral faculty, 
which, in its and their weakness, became often and 
speedily prostituted to immorality. Nevertheless, the 
possession of the moral faculty was in itself a rise, and 
not a fall. To come into such an estate, even pre- 
sumptuously and forbidden, was to rise into a higher 
order of being. The fall was after this rise, when the 
new moral faculty chose tergiversation rather than 
frankness, and falsehood rather than truth. 

This is but a hint of the gist of a theory which is 
weak, perhaps, and far-fetched on the face of it, and 
yet, in bocty and soul, is not without strength. And 
as the answer to the great problem is an unknown 
quantity, and must be represented by some x, y, or z 
in order to be worked out, the necessarily hypothetic 
theory which harmonizes the greatest number of facts 
must, it would appear, be the best one to begin on. 
This may not be such an one ; but we have ciphered, 
patiently or impatiently, on the old hypotheses with 
distinguished lack of success ; and it can surety do no 



56 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

harm to take a fresh start on fresh ground. This 
theory may develop difficulties of its own ; but many of 
those which perplex the old dispensation disappear 
under its light. Especially falls to the ground that 
monstrous assumption, that all mankind, descending 
from Adam by ordinary generation, sinned in him, and 
fell with him in his first transgression ; that all man- 
kind, by the fall of one man, for whom they were in no 
wise responsible, and from whom they involuntarily 
descended, lost communion with God, and are under 
his wrath and curse. The law of the transmission of 
traits, faculties, qualities, is indisputable, though little 
understood. Adam having, by his own act, become a 
moral being, all his descendants became, perforce, moral 
beings. But by that act he did not sin. When he 
performed the act, he was not a moral being. His first 
act after that change may or may not have been sinful ; 
but the act itself was not sinful. And each child born 
is born sinless — sinless, but with tendencies to sin or 
to purity, according as its ancestors have kept them- 
selves pure, or have lapsed into sin ; have consecrated 
him to God, or left him to be the pre} r of the serpent. 
We all recognize the fact that virtue produces virtue, 
and vice has a tendency to spring from vice. This 
theory shows it reasonable that moral strength should 
be, as our experience finds it, cumulative, and gives us 
encouragement to work for the exaltation of the race. 



ADAM. 57 

By this theory we are not dismayed to find ourselves, 
at the outstart, with a perfect and a perfectly-equipped 
man, tripping at the first step into the gulf of wreck 
and ruin. We find ourselves, on the contrary, enter- 
ing the lists with a progenitor far less perfectly 
equipped than we, and whose mistake and whose sub- 
sequent sins, even if sins there were, were, in a certain 
sense, entirely natural. We see why the Lord God 
should pronounce a curse on the serpent who had 
intermeddled so disastrously, who had tempted the 
ignorant, innocent man to thrust himself into a sphere 
for which he was unfit, and which could not fail to 
bring him dismay and woe, instead of waiting the 
slow, sweet processes, the pleasant paths, by which the 
Lord God would have prepared him, and have led him 
without hurt into the realm of the divine — but should 
have pronounced no curse upon the man and woman so 
beguiled. We do by no means lose sight of the horror 
of great darkness which envelops the origin of evil ; 
but what we do see is clear and pure, and casts no 
shadow on the great white throne. It doth, not yet 
appear, perhaps it never in this world will appear, that 
he hath put all enemies under his feet. But certainly, 
in this guise, he does not figure as a God of wrath and 
cursing, shutting himself away from the poor, feeble, 
falling man whom he has just made, but a God of 
infinite love and condescension and consideration, 



58 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

standing by his puny man "through evil report and 
through good report," punishing him only when he must, 
and as little as he can, bending low to his infirmities, 
promising all sorts of earthly good to him while his 
soul is not elevated enough to value higher things, and 
gradually, and with godlike pains and patience, lift- 
ing him into a more spiritual life. 

It is not to be supposed that the framers of any 
systems of theology and philosophy have acted from 
wrong or unworthy motives. Doubtless they have 
acted from the highest and the best. Our fathers did 
not mean to make a sanguinary, arbitrary, cruel God, 
being themselves cruel and arrogant men. They 
acted, on the contrary, on the sublime and self-sacrifi- 
cing principle, let God be true, and every man a liar. 
There is something pathetic, heroic, in their resolution 
to justify God, even at the expense of every instinct of 
humanity. And unto them and their offering, doubt- 
less, God had respect. But it cannot be that God 
wishes us to sacrifice our common sense in his behalf, 
though it is to be hoped he will not wholly condemn 
us if we do. It must be that he wishes us to bring to 
the study of himself the same modes of thought and 
reason that we use in reference to other things ; for 
with these minds has he himself endowed us. If there 
is something which we do not understand, and cannot 
reconcile, it is better to let it go uncomprehended and 



ADAM. 59 

inconsistent than to warp every rule of reason in the 
effort to explain and combine. It is not indispensable, 
though it is lawful, for finite human beings to attempt 
to frame perfect theological and philosophical sy stems ; 
but it is indispensable that they should not overturn 
reason and instinct and consciousness in so doing. 

It seems, sometimes, to be thought, that, unless we 
sinned in Adam, we cannot be saved in Christ. But, if 
we are not saved in Christ any more palpably and con- 
sciously than we sinned in Adam, we might as well be 
lost. 

If we are to take Paul verbally, and not argumen- 
tatively; if we are to understand his eager, rapid 
discourse as a presentation of historical facts contro- 
verting the original account of creation, and not as 
a literary and perfectly just illustration to elucidate the 
thought that glowed within him, without reference to 
scientific or historical statement, — then we must so take 
it in all its parts, and to the last degree. To me there 
is no clashing between Paul's statements and the ab- 
solution of every man from guilt in Adam's act. We 
might, indeed, say that not only sin, but sinners, and 
every thing else, entered into the world by one man. 
But Paul is not concerned with any naturalistic theory. 
He is striving to set forth the unsearchable riches of 
Christ, to show that salvation is as broad as sin, as 
wide as death ; that man cannot go outside the love of 



60 SERMONS TO TEE CLERGY. 

Christ ; that just as truly as all men die by reason of 
their belonging to a mortal race, just so surely may 
they live by reason of the life and immortality brought 
to light in the gospel of Christ. If he does not mean 
this ; if he means that literally all men sinned and died 
in Adam, without consciousness, or will, of their 
own,— r then we must continue the parallel, and main- 
tain that they live in Christ without any voluntary 
acceptance of him, or belief in him, or following after 
him. 



THE "BLUE BLOOD" OF CANAAN. 




THE "BLUE BLOOD" OF CANAAN. 

IT seems sometimes as if God did not care so 
much about honor and truth and righteous- 
ness as the newspapers do. We are con- 
vulsed at some flagrant misdemeanor ; but the sacred 
historians take it as coolly as possible. The Bible is 
full of sound moral precepts, and bad practical exam- 
ples. You cannot teach your Sunda}^-school class the 
lesson of Jacob's ladder, without striking snags in all 
directions. What a family it was, to begin with ! — a 
doting, partial father, a deceitful, partial mother, and 
two spoiled children. Isaac loved Esau — because he 
did eat of his venison. But Rebekah loved Jacob. 
Whether she had an equally creditable reason for her 
preference, we are not told. Esau seems to have been 
a rash, headlong boy ; quick-tempered, but generous 
and forgiving ; relinquishing his birthright in a moment 
of passionate impatience, but capable of lifelong 
regret ; bitterly resentful of his defrauded blessing, 
yet gentle and magnanimous ; a vigorous, manly, and 
somewhat savage character. No wonder his father 

63 



64 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

loved him. But the mother's pet was Ja<?ob, — a 
quiet boy, content to stay at home, while Esau was 
gathering strength and skill from the chase ; a docile, 
stupid boy, without wit enough to plan deceit, or will 
enough to prevent it, and only just enough of both 
to carry it out. It was Rebekah who devised fraud 
upon the blind old father, and then another fraud to 
save Jacob from the richly-merited consequences ; for 
even the man seems tied as closely to his mother's 
apron-strings as the child had been. But Esau, too, 
with all his breezy, outdoor life, was not indocile. 
He humored his father's ruling passion for venison 
with as much alacrity as Jacob humored their mother's 
for deception. He went out for his prey as readily as 
Jacob went in for his. When he saw that his wives 
did not please his father, he cheerfully took more 
wives. Since the daughters of Canaan did not suit, 
what more natural than to try the daughters of Ish- 
mael? When Jacob came back from Padan-Aram, 
fearing the wrath of Esau, and deprecating it with 
crafty forethought, with gifts and servile words, hale 
and hearty Esau seems quite to have forgotten their 
little tiff, and to have been entirely at a loss to know 
what all this ado was for. In short, and speaking 
after the manner of men, we should say that Esau was 
far the more agreeable, interesting, and gifted person ; 
and that Jacob — with his sly ways, and his mean- 



THE "BLUE BLOOD" OF CANAAN. 65 

spirited willingness to work seven years longer for the 
man who had cheated him out of one wife and into 
another, instead of rising up in virile wrath and love, 
and taking the one he wanted out of hand, will you 
nill you, as Esau would have done — was not a man to 
be held in esteem of gods, or men, or women. 

Yet it was Jacob, and not Esau, that God chose for 
the transmission of his word. Nay, more, it was when 
Jacob was fleeing from the just and natural wrath of 
Esau, it was when Jacob had just concluded a most 
barefaced, unprovoked, and successful scheme of perfi- 
dy against his own brother, when he had just made 
that brother's kindness, and their father's blindness, an 
opportunity for high-handed cheating, that the Lord 
met him and said — what? u The blessing that thou 
didst obtain by sacrilege shall be turned into curses : 
instead of lording it over the brother whom thou hast 
cruelly and repeatedly wronged, thou shalt be his ser- 
vant of servants : what thou hast gained by fraud 
thou shalt lose by force, that men may know that I am 
a God hating iniquity, and that I will by no means 
clear the guilty"? Not at all. Nor did God even 
say, as Isaac did, with sore regret, "I have blessed 
him, yea, and he shall be blessed, though he came with 
subtilty," recognizing the irrevocable word while 
bitterly lamenting the false pretences upon which it 
was obtained ; for Isaac, at least, never held that fraud 

6* 



66 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

vitiated election. It was by treachery of the roost 
outrageous kind, — treachery- to an innocent brother 
absent on an errand of filial love, — treachery to the 
blindness of a dying father, — treachery in the name 
of the Most High God. " How is it that thou hast 
found it so quickly, my son?" — "Because the Lord 
thy God brought it to me," replies he, whom a news- 
paper, if it were reporting the case, might call the 
hypocritical villain. By such treachery had Jacob 
gained the blessing ; and for all Esau's great and ex- 
ceeding bitter cry, — for all his pathetic entreaty, 
"Hast thou but one blessing, my father? Bless me, 
even me also, my father!" — Isaac could not take 
back the promised supremacy. 

Bat God did more than this. He met this false, 
cruel, heartless man on his way to Padan-Aram, with 
his sins still hot within his heart ; and, instead of 
rebuking, he repeats and confirms and intensifies the 
plundered blessing. Without even an implied cen- 
sure, without so much as a reference to his past, he 
assures the guilty man, " The land whereon thou liest, 
to thee will I give it, and to thy seed. . . . And be- 
hold I am with thee, and will keep thee, in all places 
... for I will not leave thee until I have done that 
which I have spoken to thee of." 

Surely it would have seemed more impartial and 
fatherly in the Great Father to appear in a vision to 



THE "BLUE BLOOD" OF CANAAN. 67 

poor, cheated Esau, to comfort him. Was it quite fair 
that Esau should suffer all his life, through all his gen- 
erations, for one sudden moment of self-indulgence, 
and that Jacob should not suffer at all, but be cherished 
and encouraged for a cold-blooded outrage of every hon- 
orable instinct and every filial and fraternal obligation ? 
Is yielding to a quick temptation worse than partner- 
ship in deliberate vice? At any rate, Jacob's treason 
seems not to have alienated God from his cause. And 
in practical, actual life, it is equally true that momen- 
tary sins are often more severely punished than life- 
long sins. There are sins which in themselves are 
no sins, which are sinful only by reason of circum- 
stances, which have their root in innocence, and 
spring side by side with every virtue, grace, and charm, 
yet in one moment overspread and shadow life. 
And across the way a fatal selfishness blights every 
fair thing it touches, and scatters disappointment and 
misery on all around ; yet the selfish man lives with 
untarnished respectability, and dies at last in the odor 
of sanctity. Esau's one lapse from virtue forfeited 
his birthright forever; and Jacob's smooth-faced wile 
and saintly guile sealed his inheritance, and crowned 
him with glory and honor. 

It has happened to this generation to be disturbed 
because persons who have retired from public with a 
shadow upon their fair fame have been received at 



68 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

home with formal respect and rejoicing. Those who 
believe that the shadow was a stain are indignant 
that a man's fellow-townsmen who do not believe 
it should publicly testify their unbelief, and should 
welcome their respected friends with music and fes- 
tivity. "What safeguard for public virtue," we cry, 
" when public opinion and sentiment are thus undis- 
criminating of right and wrong? " But human judg- 
ment is not infallible ; and it is to be set down to a 
man's credit, if the community in which he lives believe 
him innocent, though all other men speak evil of him. 
But here is a case which admits of no doubt. Jacob 
had lied and cheated in the most abominable, the most 
contemptible, and the most successful manner. Yet 
it was when he was fleeing from the natural conse- 
quences of his unnatural crime, that he had a recep- 
tion which throws all other receptions into the shade. 
For the angels came out of heaven to honor him ; and 
the Lord God, who could have made no mistake about 
the nature of his act, appeared to him in the skies, 
and blessed him exceedingly. If he had been a hero, 
saint, and martyr, he could not have been more dis- 
tinguished by the divine condescension. And in all 
the comfort and re-assurance was mingled no word of 
rebuke. 

When the divine Being deigned to give a human 
record of his ways, he, in a manner, challenged human 



THE "BLUE BLOOD''' OF CANAAN. 69 

criticism. In the matter of Jacob, he managed very 
differently from what we should suppose a just God 
would do ; and we naturally cast about for reasons. 
Was it an occasion where magnanimity was more 
effective than penalty ? Did the divine condescension 
work remorse in Jacob's heart? Not at all. He was 
surprised, but not into repentance, still less into res- 
toration. The prudent, discreet man was convinced 
that his vision was from God ; and he vowed a vow, 
but still with his eye steadfastly fixed on the main 
chance. 

" If — God will be with me" — God had promised 
to be with him. 

1 ' And — will keep me in the way that I go ' ' — 
God had promised to keep him in all places whither 
he should go. 

"And — will give me bread to eat" — None of 
your glittering and sounding generalities for Jacob ! 
He meant to have the terms of the bargain clearly 
defined. "Keeping thee" is neither here nor there. 
He was too wily himself to believe that the Lord God 
could be trusted with verbal discretion or a liberal 
rendering of the terms of the contract. "Shall I 
have plenty to eat and drink and wear? " 

' ' And — raiment to put on ? " 

" So that I come again to my father's house in 
peace ' ' — Not harried and hated and hunted by that 
great, strong, and angry Esau. 6* 



70 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

" Then shall the Lord be my God." 

Truly such worship must be pleasing to the Maker 
of men. 

There is a sort of sublime audacity in the way in 
which the Bible deals with facts. It not only never 
palliates, but it never explains. It makes the most 
astounding statements without a particle of emotion. 
Its respectable and virtuous men are credited with 
high-handed villany as coolly as the census is taken. 
Nations fall at the edge of the sword, and nobody 
winces. Principles are enunciated, precepts laid 
down, biography and history written. You are left to 
work on them at your leisure. You may reconcile 
contradictions if you can. You may find motives if 
you choose. You may like or dislike, accept or reject ; 
but 3^ou will get no help from the sacred writer. He 
is absolutely indifferent to your conclusions and opin- 
ions, to your creeds and your theories. He marches 
straight on through his narrative, perfectly calm and 
composed ; and you can take yourself and your hypoth- 
eses out of the way, or be serenely trodden under foot. 
He gives no sign. 

Apparently the Creator manages his world on a busi- 
ness basis. We are apt to think of him as intent only 
on rewarding the good, and punishing the bad. Doubt- 
less, in the end, goodness will be upheld, and iniquity 
destroyed ; but at present, and to our experience and 



THE "BLUE BLOOD" OF CANAAN. 71 

consciousness, it is not holiness, but availability, that 
seems to be in requisition. God chooses men and 
nations for his service, not in proportion to their inno- 
cence, but their fitness. Just as, in time of war, com- 
mands may be awarded, not to the officer of blameless 
moral character, but of the greatest military genius. 
Just as, in time of peace, men may be elevated to high 
station, in spite of known personal blemishes, because 
they have the knowledge, the capacity, the experience, 
which the country needs. Their moral delinquency 
may be a grief of heart to Isaac and Eebekah, a thorn 
in the side of Rachel ; but it may not incapacitate 
them for handling the public revenues, or caring for 
the public interests, better than any other man. We 
say, sometimes, that the people should vote only for 
good men ; but a good man in the wrong place will do 
as much mischief as a bad man. God does not seem 
to have been very particular about employing good 
men. 

The divine purpose or object was to choose a nation 
to receive the Christ for the whole world's sake. For 
this purpose, it is easy to see that Esau — fearless, 
adventurous, great-hearted, raiding around the country 
sword in hand, sacrificing his most valued treasures in 
a moment of impetuous fatigue, easily placated, but 
easily inflamed — was far less fitted than the plain and 
quiet Jacob, dwelling in tents, clinging to his mother, 



72 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

working seven years for his wife, and, when cheated 
out of her, patiently taking another seven-years' pull at 
it ; not, like Esau, carving out his fortune with his 
sword, in the wide, wild desert, but whittling it out 
with his jack-knife, among his sheep and goats. It was 
not Esau's unsuspecting readiness nor generous forgive- 
ness that unfitted him for the Lord's service, but his 
impulsive temper and nomadic tastes. It was not 
Jacob's duplicity that recommended him to God, but 
his tenacity of purpose. God met him at Bethel, not 
to encourage him in his wickedness, but to encourage 
him in spite of his wickedness. Jacob was thoroughly 
frightened ; and it was necessary that he should be 
re-assured. But, in order that he should be the bearer 
of the Messiah to the world, it was not indispensable 
that he should be brave : it was only indispensable 
that he should live and prosper. Jacob was no better 
a man for securing his just wages from tricky Laban 
by a trick, and stealing away from him unknown, when 
he had the power and the right to march off with flying 
colors ; but that intense love of life and peace and 
quietness, and that ever-present timidity which made 
him always and instinctively choose the submissive, 
peaceable, servile course, rather than the outspoken, 
resolute, and possibly violent one, constituted him the 
fit recipent of the ark and the covenant. He failed 
in grit, but he was mighty in grip. 



THE "BLUE BLOOD" OF CANAAN. 73 

Probably Jacob was of so mean a nature, that he 
could not understand the nature of the transaction in 
which he had just been implicated, nor in the least 
appreciate the enormity of the crime which he had com- 
mitted. But a high moral sense was not necessary. 
There needed only certain mental and individual quali- 
ties, which Jacob possessed ; and God did not even 
make the attempt to indoctrinate him into a high 
spiritual life, or to inspire him with high moral senti- 
ments, but accepted his coarse, mercenary loyalty, and 
left it to time and circumstances to make a better man 
of him. Jacob, as an individual, was no dearer to 
God than was Esau. But Jacob as the founder of the 
nation chosen for the most important mission of the 
world was invaluable. Therefore, God met him, and 
sustained him. 

This, also, may have had a place in the divine econ- 
omy. Christ came to save that which was lost ; to 
call, not " the righteous, but sinners to repentance.' ' 
As he took upon himself the form of man in order to 
save men, so it may be that he took upon himself the 
form of the lowest and least of men to save the 
lowest and least. Humanity was to be saved, not from 
its noble, its generous, its manly traits, but from its 
vile, mean, underhanded tendencies. So God chose 
out the mean and sly, and made himself of no reputa- 
tion, but incorporated himself with them, that no one 



74 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

henceforth should think himself, or be thought by 
others, too mean, too low, for salvation. Christ, in 
rising up out of this crafty, cruel, wretched family, 
drew all the crafty, cruel, wretched human family with 
him. God could have staid in heaven, and ruled the 
world thence ; but, choosing to descend, he showed 
that it was necessary he should descend, in order, as 
it were, to get a better purchase. We may, thence, 
infer, that, the deeper the descent, the more sweeping 
the salvation. 

There remains, of course, always the alternative of 
denying the reality of the revelation. We may believe 
that it was only a dream ; that God did not appear, 
but that Jacob magnified his own consequence, and 
salved his conscience with a trumped-up story. This 
would be no worse than many things which he is re- 
ported to have done. And, when he subsequently told 
the story of his speckled and ring-streaked cattle to 
Leah and Rachel, we cannot help suspecting that he 
drew a long bow. But, besides that he seems to have 
been too unimaginative a man to have invented such a 
story ; and that the narrative is not given as from his 
lips, but from the pen of the historian, — his tale of the 
second vision rather confirms the reality of the first. 
He could not invent a circumstance so remarkable ; 
but, when it had once happened to him, he was so 
childish, and so given to deceit, that it was quite easy 



THE "BLUE BLOOD" OF CANAAN. 75 

and natural to him to get up a dream and a vision on 
slight provocation. It was so very respectable a way 
to disarm criticism upon any questionable proceeding 
to say, "The angel of God spake unto me in a 
dream." 

Dr. Robinson makes a remarkably, indeed, I might 
almost say a startlingly, interesting statement on this 
subject. In his travels he had reached a slope that 
looked straight down upon the spot where Jacob must 
have lain, near the old city of Luz ; and there the party 
halted to rest. 

" I remember now how instinctively I found a stone for a 
pillow. I lay back with my hands over my eyes, but irresisti- 
bly peering through them. A long, beautiful valley lay right 
down before us, so regular and smooth, that it might have been 
furrowed with a giant's plough. Wonderfully green it was with 
the first verdure of spring. It stretched away for full three or 
four miles, rising rapidly in the glade all the time, until it 
faded into dimness and disappearance on the summit of a high 
hill. It appeared to be a most fertile land-tract, caught 
thus thriftily by some industrious husbandman, who, in order 
further to guard it on either side from the wash of the hills, 
had terraced it all along its length with conspicuous walls of 
stone. So there below us it was spread, a green oblong of 
soil, outlined and plain, between two lengths of rude yellow 
masonry the entire distance. Across the slender tongue of 
land, at right angles to the rest, the painstaking man had con- 
structed other terraces in the same way, — one in perhaps 
every forty rods, or thereabouts. This was to catch moisture. 



76 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

and prevent the wash in the other direction. But, if I make 
myself clear at all in the description, it is evident that the 
appearance was precisely that of a gigantic ladder, — one end 
close to us, distinct at our feet ; the other almost touching the 
sky. While I was recalling the history in listless reminiscence, 
it suddenly occurred to me that this was Jacob's vision. 

"I started up with an exclamation of surprise that fairly 
aroused my companions. . . . All our eyes were instantly 
turned toward the spot. There could be no mistaking it. 
Here was the faultless natural image, half disclosed as it must 
have been in the starlight to him, out of which Jacob's ladder 
grew. I do not say this was what he saw. I only say it was 
what we saw. We laid our heads back upon the ' pillows,' and 
the illusion was perfect. Away from us, from earth to heaven, 
that exquisite structure rose on its background of beautiful 
green." 

If we were not alarmed by the cry of " naturalism," 
would not this seem to give the story a purely earthly, 
though a beautifully poetic origin? And, again, why 
is " mere naturalism ' ' such a bete noir? Is not God 
at the head of this world which we see, just as truly as 
he is the head of the unseen world ? All theological 
professors admit that only the divine Hand could keep 
the sun up after nightfall ; but it seems to me a pretty 
divine sort of thing to keep the sun up till sundown 
every day. The doctors of divinity speak as if it 
needs omnipotence to divide the Red Sea on a particu- 
lar occasion; but anybody could do it ordinarily. 
Supernaturalism must be accredited to Deity ; but any 



TEE "BLUE BLOOD" OF CANAAN. 11 

tyro is equal to mere naturalism. For me, I confess I 
cannot speak so cavalierly of the creation. To me, 
God is of this world and in this world, just as truly as 
he is above this world. It is very interesting to know 
how he appeared to Jacob ; but it is still more inter- 
esting to know that he is not far from every one of us. 
Suppose we reject every supernatural element from 
Jacob's ladder, and reduce it to " mere naturalism," 
what harm is done? God is not mocked. The sacred 
writer is not discredited. He tells us distinctly that 
Jacob dreamed and beheld. He tells us that God 
Almighty appeared to Jacob. No one doubts that 
Jacob dreamed and beheld. No one doubts that God 
Almighty appeared to him. But there may be, with- 
out impiety and without irreverence, dozens of opinions 
as to what particular kind of a dream Jacob dreamed, 
or in what particular manner God appeared to him. 
What we are to do is to study facts, and believe accord- 
ing to evidence. What we are not to do is to set up 
pet theories of naturalism or supernaturalism, and say, 
" These be thy gods, O Israel ! " If Jacob lay down 
at Luz, weary, footsore, heavy-hearted, homesick, his 
last waking gaze fixed upon the lovely landscape, 
longing for the comfort and consolation of which he 
despaired ; and if, as starving men dream of banquets, 
he dreamed of heavenly succor, and grew strong there- 
by, did not God appear to him in the dream? Did he 



78 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

appear to him any the less because he may appear to 
others in the same way? Is God dishonored because 
we say that " every good gift is from above, and cometh 
down from the Father of lights, with whom is no 
variableness, neither shadow of turning"? I see no 
reason to suppose that the divine Being values super- 
naturalism more than naturalism. On the contrary, 
he never acts above Nature when he can just as well 
act through Nature. And whether Jacob had a natu- 
ral or a supernatural dream is still an open and a per- 
fectly legitimate question. 

The gentleman of Genesis was unquestionably Jo- 
seph. u There were giants in the earth in those days ; " 
but the only symmetrical figure was Joseph's. Adam 
had dominion over the earth ; but he attempted to 
shield himself from the divine displeasure by laying 
the blame on his wife, which no gentleman would ever 
do. " Noah was a just man, and perfect in his genera- 
tions,' ' if you do not mind an occasional fit of drunk- 
enness. Abraham was a fine old sheik, a truly heroic 
figure, brave, generous, courteous, hospitable, mag- 
nanimous. No wonder the haughty Jews loved to 
remember and repeat that they were Abraham's chil- 
dren. But Abraham had his weakness, and fell before 
his temptations ; and Isaac followed in his footsteps. 
Of Jacob, perhaps the least said the better, though he 
maintained his position as head of his family with 



THE "BLUE BLOOD" OF CANAAN. 79 

unrelenting vigor, calling no one master, either son or 
king. There may have been other men whose life was 
11 without fear, and without reproach ; " but their history 
is unknown to us : their portrait is hardly more than a 
name. Joseph alone rises up out of that vast, far 
world, clearly outlined, distinctly seen, simple, saintly, 
strong, — a perfect gentleman. 

Yet we should hardly expect it. His father was a 
man of double-dealing, and courageous only in ex- 
tremity. His mother could steal, upon occasion, and lie 
like a Frenchwoman, and was envious, petulant, and 
unreasonable. His brothers showed their blood and 
training. They were not without admirable traits ; 
bat they were given to low vices ; they were treach- 
erous, cruel, and remorseless. And not only was 
Joseph the son of his father's beloved wife, the 
child of long waiting and many hopes ; but his mother 
died in his early bo}'hood, and left him thus still more 
at the mercy of untrained and unwise favoritism. 
Surely Joseph had every prospect of becoming a 
spoiled child ; yet he came out of it all tender and 
sweet, and pure as the angels in heaven. No one pre- 
tends that he ever was disciplined. If there is any 
thing injudicious and unnatural, it is partiality in 
parental feeling and treatment. Yet Jacob made no 
secret that he loved Joseph more than all the rest of 
his sons. It naturally made the others angry; but 



80 SEEM ON S TO THE CLERGY. 

Joseph's amiability of temper and disposition seem to 
have been beyond the reach of the spoiler. We see, 
therefore, that even Solomon cannot have it all his 
own way. If you do not train up a child in the way 
he should go, he may go there, in spite of you. Love 
— demonstrative, overflowing everlasting — seems to 
have done for Joseph every thing that the severest 
discipline, the most careful training, could have done. 
Let us take courage. We cannot all be wise ; but we 
can all love. 

Life lowered darkly over his dreams when this hand- 
some, spirited young fellow was torn away from his 
fond old father, and sold into apparently perpetual and 
hopeless slavery. From being the pet and pride of 
the house, with great expectations of immense wealth, 
free, commanding, and beloved, this wandering heir 
was an alien and a servant, and presently in a dungeon. 
One would think his heart would have broken — his 
free, wild soul, bred to the hills and the skies and all 
the wide wilderness ; but he held himself firmly and 
equably. Servitude and the prison were but his oppor- 
tunity. There he developed his high executive ability, 
and honor the most delicate and lofty. It was not 
supineness, nor even an Oriental submission to fate ; 
for his one prayer was to be taken " out of this 
house : " but, while he was in it, he lived and learned 
and labored, instead of pining. How came that grand 



THE "BLUE BLOOD" OF CANAAN. 81 

and tranquil spirit into the form of the spoiled child ? 
Where, in his nomad, turbulent tribe, did he learn 
this serene self-possession, this instinctive high-minded- 
ness? 

He had a gentleman's spontaneous shrinking from 
"a scene." When he could no longer restrain him- 
self, when there was no longer need that he should 
restrain himself, since he had tested his brothers' dis- 
position, and found that those who had sold him into 
bondage were now ready to assume the dungeon them- 
selves to save their young brother for their father's 
sake, he sent every man — every officer, servant, at- 
tendants-out of the room while he made himself 
known to his brethren. No stranger should witness 
that solemn moment. And then how his great heart 
broke in the anguish of love and tenderness and long- 
ing ! Recognition, re- assurance, inquiry, comfort, he 
pours upon them incoherently, impetuously. No tact 
of a French salon could surpass the tender tact of this 
true-hearted gentleman. Their sin and shame must 
come up (there is no help for that, his identity re- 
quires it) ; but they come up only to be buried away 
out of sight and sound forever. He gives his brothers 
no chance to repent. He takes the words out of their 
mouths : he would take the thought out of their 
hearts, if he could. He forgives them so completely, 
that they never sinned. It was not they that sent him 
7* 



82 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

hither, but God. Whitest of all white lies ! Whiter 
and purer and fairer than the truth itself ! Sweet lie 
that deceives nobody, and consoles the remorseful, and 
succors the fainting heart ! And how guileless, filial, 
and natural is his exultation over his proud pre-emi- 
nence ! Doubtless he goes in and out before the Egyp- 
tians as stately and pompous as any Pharaoh of them 
all. No look or word betrays the smallest conscious- 
ness of purple robe or regal chariot ; but with these 
his brothers, who knew him as a boy, playing among 
the sheepfolds, he delights to speak of his power ; and 
perhaps the first pure joy in his glory he feels is when 
he bids them " tell my father of all my glory in Egypt." 
And let it not be forgotten, this petted, dreaming 
boy, this spotless, incorruptible man, this fond, forgiv- 
ing brother and yearning son, was no milksop, but a 
great, powerful, ambitious, far-seeing man, premier 
of Egypt, connected by marriage with the first families, 
emphatically a ruler in his own right and by his own 
might. Many boys, and some men and some women, 
seem to think that to be tender and pure and loving is 
to be " spooney." Our knowing philosophers are apt 
to assert that u the good ones aren't smart, and 
the smart ones aren't good." Bring out, then, your 
rough-and-ready men, your sowers of wild oats, who 
are u smarter" than Joseph. Let us see a question- 
able, unprincipled, or careless life crowned with more 



THE "BLUE BLOOD" OF CANAAN. 83 

even of what the world calls success than this Sir 
Galahad of old Egypt. The boy dreamed dreams by 
the water-courses of Canaan; but he was an "adroit 
politician" in the council-chamber of Pharaoh. He 
was not an advocate of universal suffrage. He had no 
love for a republican form of government. He did not 
believe in democracy. He was a land-monopolist of 
the worst sort, and his income taxes were enormous. 
But he ruled with a high hand. His word was law, 
and his law was final. Pharaoh himself seems to have 
been but a roi faineant. Whether in the house of 
Potiphar, the prison of the guard, or the palace of the 
king, this inexperienced young shepherd, this faithful 
honest servant, this pure, polite, gentle, tender man, 
rose by sheer wit and worth to the first' rank. And 
finally, above all political preferment, and all ancestral 
advantage, and all personal ambition, he became the 
very head and front of one of the most learned, power- 
ful, and prosperous kingdoms of antiquity. Let vice 
show a more brilliant career, before virtue is perma- 
nently discrowned. 

But, if I am ever on speaking terms with Joseph, I 
mean to ask him why it was, that, during the twenty 
odd years of his prison and palace life, he never com- 
municated with his father. His brothers deserved no 
better. But the fond old father was blameless ; and it 
would have been such a comfort to him to know that 
an evil beast had not devoured the lad ! 



OUK CHARITIES. 




OUR CHARITIES. 

|T a late meeting of the American Board in 
Rutland, a great deal was said about giving 
to the Lord. The point to be driven in was 
the duty of supporting the various missions undertaken 
by the churches which act through the Board. One 
speaker said, in substance, as reported, that u while a 
Christian man has a right to accumulate all he needs 
as a capital with which to carry on his business suc- 
cessfully, and make the most money he can for the 
Lord, yet, when this point is once reached, it should be 
a serious question, whether the surplus should not all 
be systematically cast into the Lord's treasury." 
Another said that one-tenth was a very small part for a 
rich man to offer to the Lord. A third advocated the 
system which makes each one ask, ' 4 How much shall 
I give to the Lord? " A fourth told of the man, who, 
in the loss of his fortune, rejoiced in what he had given 
away; for " all he gave to the Lord's treasury was 
saved, but all he saved for himself had been lost." 
And so throughout, and throughout our ecclesiasticism 

87 



88 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

generally, the money which we devote to teaching and 
extending the gospel is considered money given to the 
Lord ; while the money which we devote to other pur- 
poses is money kept to ourselves. 

That was the phraseology of the law. But we live 
under the gospel. When there was a Church and a 
State of which God was the official and recognized 
head, the treasury of that Church was the treasury of 
the Lord ; and the offerings which God ordained as one 
feature of the regular worship were offerings unto the 
Lord. But that Church and that State government 
have, by God's own decree, passed away. He stands 
to us now only in spiritual relations. No one church, 
no one government, no one person, no one cause, is, 
officially, any closer to him than any other. He has no 
treasury apart from our treasury. There is no peculiar 
people ; " but, in every nation, he that feareth God, and 
worketh righteousness, is accepted with him." Phra- 
seology, therefore, which was once strictly accurate, is 
now only poetically true, and if used too commonly 
becomes offensive, and if used too strenuously be- 
comes subversive of the truth, a teacher of false 
doctrine. 

Granting to the establishment and support of Chris- 
tian missions all the usefulness and importance which 
their most devoted founders claim, it is still not true 
that the money appropriated to them is necessarily 



OUR CHARITIES. . 89 

given to the Lord, airy more than the money appropri- 
ated to the preaching of the gospel at home. Grant- 
ing to the pulpit all the power and influence which its 
friends assert, it is still not true that money appropri- 
ated to its support is any more, necessarily, given to 
the Lord than the money which supports the family. 
Of every dollar and every cent not spent for an evil 
purpose, and wasted to no purpose, one may be 
given to the Lord just as much as another — no more, 
and no less. " The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness 
thereof." There is no reason to suppose that he has 
any pet schemes or any favorite persons. He is simply 
full of good-will to men ; and, wherever man spends 
money for the benefit of man, he is casting it into the 
treasmy of the Lord. My Irish washerwoman, who 
is carefully hoarding the few dollars earned by her 
unremitting labors, and coaxing her hens to super- 
human efforts in the way of eggs, that she may make 
up a certain sum for the savings bank at the begin- 
ning of the quarter, for the future education and re- 
spectability of her child, is casting her money into the 
treasury of the Lord just as truly as the rich men who 
are giving their thousands, and the poor widows who 
are giving their mites, to the American Board. The 
man who buys a picture to encourage a struggling ar- 
tist ; the woman who birys a silk gown, that she may be 
dressed in a manner becoming her position ; the girl 
8* 



90 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

who adorns her hair with a red rose, that she may be 
pleasing in the eyes of her lover ; the lover who would 
fain choose the fairest ring out of the jeweller's case to 
express his delight in her who is wholly fair, — they 
are all giving their money to the Lord. Whatever it 
is right to do with money, that is an offering unto the 
Lord. The woman may be extravagant, the man may 
be dishonest ; but whoever is spending money as it is 
right for him to spend it, he is casting it into the 
treasury of the Lord. 

God is no tax-gatherer, demanding a tenth part of 
our income or property, and letting us enjoy the rest 
ourselves. He does not stand in the way, taking 
toll of all who pass through his world. The whole 
world is his ; and the whole world is ours. He giveth 
us richly all things to enjoy ; and he enjoj^s what we 
enjoy. So far as our missionary effort is benevolent, 
he, no doubt, is pleased with it. If reason and reve- 
lation teach us any thing, they teach us that he, also, 
enjoys the father's pleasure in carrying home a doll to 
his little girl, a hoop to his little boy. He is pleased 
at the housewife's pleasure in her tidy home, at the 
frugal man's satisfaction in his accumulating wealth, 
at the energetic man's success in great enterprises, at 
the poet's happiness in friendly appreciation and world- 
wide fame. In whatever is generous, self-sacrificing, 
beneficent, we all agree God is well pleased. But I 



OUR CHARITIES. 91 

think, also, that in whatever is innocent, agreeable, 
pleasant, natural, he is also pleased. Wherever men 
and women and children are supporting themselves, 
gratifying one another's tastes, bearing one another's 
burdens, entertaining each other, making life easy for 
husband, wife, or child, smoothing roughnesses, level- 
ling stumbling-blocks, meeting annoyances quietly, or 
resenting offences wisely, there they are doing the 
Lord's work. We ourselves are the temples of the 
Holy Ghost ; and whatever ministers to the temple of 
the Holy Ghost is — Corban. We are the servants 
and sons of the Most High God. Not one-tenth, nor 
five-tenths, of our income, but all our income and capi- 
tal — personal property and real estate — belong to 
him, and are to be used to further the ends which he has 
in view ; and those ends must be the happiness, the 
education, the highest spiritual life, of nations and in- 
dividuals. The Lord is not in the American Board, nor 
in the American pulpit. He is eveiy where, — in the 
shop, by the fireside, at the table. He is to be served 
by the marketing, as well as by the missions. There is 
no rule of tenth and tribute. We are to judge by our 
own reason. We will give to the American Board 
such and so much as its wisdom and necessities de- 
mand of us, but on precisely the same grounds as we 
furnish our tables, and fill our wardrobes. I see no 
reason why we should ask the Master of the universe 



92 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

how much we shall give to the American Board, any 
more than we should ask him how much we shall spend 
upon a croquet-set, or whether we shall buy a Brussels 
or an ingrain carpet. He has given us abundant 
means to find out these things for ourselves ; and he 
cannot be pleased to have us ask needless questions. 
We know, or ought to know, what our account-books 
say, just as well as Omniscience knows it ; and, if we 
do not know whether the American Board is wise in its 
administration, Omniscience will never tell us, so long 
as the publication of " The Missionary Herald," and 
" The Annual Report," and the daily newspapers, is 
continued. A lady from the Board of the Interior urged 
women to give their jewels for the missionary work. The 
ear-rings alone, she thought, might prevent the need of 
retrenchment for a long time. Another lady described 
a scene in Turkey where this idea was put in practice. 
From a service with the native women there, she had 
carried home a handkerchief-full of jewelry given for 
the building of the mission-chapel. One woman gave 
a bracelet she had worn fifty years ; and they observed 
that her ear-rings were also gone. " Yes," she said, 
" those are for the Lord too." The good lady who 
tells us the story says she felt ashamed of her own ear- 
rings, though they were only the little ones "John" 
gave her. 

I do not question either the sincerity or the earnest- 



OUR CHARITIES. 93 

ness of the speakers or of the writer. When the heart 
is wholly set on any object, the mind naturally sees all 
things in relation to that object. The ladies who have 
embarked their hopes and their fortunes in missionary 
enterprises must look upon any failure to support them 
with the utmost regret and dismay. And, indeed, it 
would seem to the most casual observer, that failure, 
or even retrenchment, would not be creditable to the 
churches. But I cannot think we have reached the 
point at which gentle and affectionate ladies need be 
uncomfortable in wearing the ear-rings which their 
husbands gave them. 

Nor do the ladies in question think so themselves. 
The shrinking possessor of the ear-rings goes naively 
over to the other side of the argument with the most 
winning unconsciousness that she has made a change 
of base. One peculiarity of the Rutland meeting 
was the evening reception given to the missionaries 
in the three church parlors. In one of these was 
spread a table covered with refreshments, and adorned 
with pyramids of fruits and flowers. 

"Why was this waste of the ointment made?" 
some one asks ; and the moderately bejewelled lady 
answers, " It was not wasted for those brave soldiers 
of the cross, any more than it was in olden time, on 
the feet of the Master. It will be told in memory 
of the Rutland women." And she is as right as a 



94 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

trovet in this decision ; but it effectually disposes of 
the ear-ring question. 

It is not simply a matter of giving ear-rings : it is 
one that concerns the whole structure of society. If 
we are to devote our ear-rings to the American Board, 
we must wholly and radically re-organize our mode of 
life. There is only one principle on which these orna- 
ments are due to that organization ; and that is, that 
we have no personal right to any thing more than the 
necessaries of life, until all the rest of the world is 
supplied with the necessaries of life. If this is 
Christianity, we are bound to put it immediately and 
forever into practice. If we are not bound to put it 
immediately and completely into practice, it is not 
Christianity. 

What would it involve? As there are thousands, 
and tens of thousands, of persons at this moment in the 
world, with physical needs unsupplied, and hundreds 
of thousands with spiritual wants unprovided for, we 
should sacrifice, not our ear-rings alone, but our silk 
gowns and our broadcloth coats, our carpets and 
china, and most of our curtains and sofas and chairs 
and silver. It means, for clergymen, shirts of the 
coarsest unbleached cotton, and, for their wives, gowns 
of linsey-woolsey. It means, in short, the relinquish- 
ment of nearly every thing that marks refinement of 
tastes or habits, or culture in art and science. It 



OUR CHARITIES. 95 

means a return to the roughest and most primitive 
form of social and family life. There is no reason 
why the lady should give up her ear-rings, that does 
not apply with equal force to her reverend husband's 
sleeve-buttons ; and even then the " refreshments " of 
those Rutland parlors should, to use a classical 
phrase, have stuck in their throats. 

As a general principle, this seems wholly irrational 
and unscriptural. There are emergencies which re- 
quire sacrifices ; but these are local, temporary, ex- 
ceptional, each separate case to be judged upon its 
own individual merits. It would be disgraceful, mon- 
strous, for a woman to wear ear-rings while her 
child, or even her neighbor, was d}<ing of starvation 
which could be fended off only by those ornaments. 
But the certain conviction that there are at this 
moment persons perishing somewhere — in London, 
or China, or Nova Zembla — for lack of food, does 
not induce us to strip off the rings from our fingers, 
the lace from our gowns, the gold heads from our 
canes. The world is one. The cause of refinement, 
of civilization, of art, of science, is the cause of God 
just as much as the missionary cause. He seems 
to be just as much engaged in polishing the corner- 
stones as in hewing them out of the rough rock. The 
Bible, on this point, gives no uncertain sound. There 
is, relatively, perhaps absolutely, no more suffering in 



96 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

the world to-day than there was when the Lord God 
commanded to overlay the ark with pure gold, to make 
the mercy-seat of pure gold, and the cherubims of 
beaten gold, and the ten curtains of fine twined linen, 
blue and purple and scarlet. Splendor of tabernacle 
and temple and priestly garb seems to have been 
ordained as means of grace. The souls of the Jews 
were to be reached through their eyes. Pomp and 
circumstance, beauty and ornament, are accepted in the 
Bible very much as they are accepted in the world, — 
admirable and valuable when they are the outward 
and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, 
hypocritical and abhorred when they are substituted 
for the grace itself. 

Even the New Dispensation, upheld by no pomp, 
endowed only with its own inherent vitality, is adjusted 
on principles harmonious with the severest code of 
common sense. When the lawyer asked Jesus, " Who 
is my neighbor? " he set forth no impracticable scheme 
of universal relief, but minded him of the duty that he 
owed to all the suffering with which he came in contact. 

There is nothing for it but to use our own reason, 
reluctant as we are to make that last resort. The 
Bible abounds in precepts and principles and illustra- 
tions ; but it steadfastly refuses to give us rules. The 
men and the women of old time, willing hearted, 
brought their bracelets and ear-rings, and heaped them 



OUR CHARITIES. 97 

up for the service of the tabernacle ; but they brought 
them with equal alacrity for the making of the molten 
calf. The small, sweet courtesies of life have their 
part in Christian character as inalienably as its sterner 
duties. The flowers and fruits, the coffee and salads, 
of the pleasant Rutland reception, were as legitimate a 
feature of the missionary work as the printing-press 
and the colporter. A tasteful and cultivated family- 
circle is a powerful missionary institution. The king's 
daughter is not only " all-glorious within," but " her 
clothing is of wrought gold." The emergencies are 
extremely rare which make it requisite, or becoming, 
for her to lay aside this regal robe, and array herself 
in sackcloth and ashes. The diamond ring may be 
just as truly consecrated to God on your own finger 
as in the contribution-box. 

Which does not affect the fact, that the churches 
would fearfully stultify themselves, if, while declaring 
their belief in Christian missions, they should enforce 
or permit retrenchment. 

We need a more intelligent understanding of the 
principles upon which all wise charity is founded, 
whether that charity be directed towards the spiritual 
wants of the heathen, or the physical wants of our own 
people. This American people is a people of magnifi- 
cent generosity, and makes some very splendid fail- 
ures. In benevolence, as in business, the logic of 
9 



98 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

events is merciless. No matter how innocently we sin, 
our sin is sure to find us out. If business be not con- 
ducted in accordance with the unwritten laws of trade, 
if benevolence be not conformed to the eternal laws of 
human nature, no integrity and no unselfishness can 
ward off disaster, either from the one or from the 
other. 

" The most bungling work society ever did," Mr. 
Beecher is reported to have said, " was when it tried 
to be merciful." True, doubtless. Society is clumsy ; 
but let it always be remembered, in mitigation of its 
blunders, that the poor are infinitely harder to deal 
with than the prosperous, and that the difficulties of 
the situation are enough to make even society lose its 
self-possession. 

The poor-house is a dreadful place, no doubt ; but 
they are a dreadful sort of persons that live in it. 
Town-paupers are not above their situation. City 
poor-houses may be filled with high-minded victims of 
circumstances ; but, in the country, paupers who have 
fallen under my observation have been, without ex- 
ception, the offscouring of the earth, — dissipated, 
imbecile, incapable. They are God's children, I 
admit; but we are God's children too: and, if his 
hand made the inmates of the poor-house disagreeable 
and despicable, the same hand made them incurably 
repugnant to outsiders. One can no more help being 
repelled by them than they can help being paupers. 



OUR CHARITIES. 99 

These remnants of society are also a great deal 
harder to get on with than society itself. Society is 
discerning, prosperous, and polite : it decorously con- 
ceals its displeasure, speaks you fairly, understands 
you generously, and, if it has any thing to say against 
you, says it behind your back, where it does no harm. 
But the remnants scowl in your face, if the porridge 
you bring them is not quite thick enough : in fact, 
you must carefully find out whether it will do to take 
them any porridge, lest }T>u hurt their feelings. In 
English novels, the poor are grateful and reverential : 
in American life, they are autocratic. It is always a 
question beforehand, whether they will hold out their 
sceptre at your approach. They are quite as likely to 
be angry at your coming so late, or so early, as grate- 
ful for your coming at all. You must keep constantly 
on the lookout, and tack and veer and haul, or you 
will speedily come to grief on the breakers. To your 
equals, you can speak with freedom and force ; but 
the sensitiveness of our high-spirited beneficiaries 
is something to be admired. I have known a man, 
who had been for years upheld by the charity of his 
neighbors, fly into a passion of rage because it was 
suggested that he should be taken to a comfortable 
refuge. No doubt, society is clumsy in its attempt to 
help ; but the crankiness and kinkiness and general 
wrongheadedness of the people to be helped make 



100 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

society clumsy. If you could be natural and simple 
with them, as you can with your peers, it would be 
easier ; but they are so open to offence, and so ungene- 
rous in interpretation, that you must weigh all frank- 
ness out of your words, and give only a measured 
platitude to satisfy their querulous honor. 

By poor people, I suppose we all mean, not those 
who have greater or less incomes, or who are forced 
to hard work, but people who are not self-supporting, 
not independent, — the persons who have to be helped. 

The fact of poverty in a country like this is a 
presumption of defect. The land is broad, food is 
plentiful, labor scanty and high, government just and 
almost impalpable. What doth hinder any man from 
earning his own living ? Illness may come : sudden 
calamity may fall. Against these, even energy may 
be powerless ; but, apart from this, it is to be assumed 
that he who fails, fails because he lacks wisdom, and 
not opportunity. And the same weakness which pre- 
vented him from grasping the opportunity prevents 
him from keeping hold of it after it is put into his 
hand. Once in a while, once in a great while, a 
timely succor avails in a moment of temporary weak- 
ness, or averts the consequence of a mistake ; and the 
man starts ahead at a swinging pace. But, oftener, 
the results seem to indicate that it is of very little use 
to help people who cannot help themselves. The 



OUR CHARITIES. 101 

kingdom of pauperism is within them. The very 
causes that made them poor keep them poor. It is 
not that society bears clown hard upon them: it 
is that the}' are self-indulgent. If you see a widow 
and five children shivering over a few embers, you pity 
them, and }^ou must send them coal ; but you cannot 
help feeling a wrathful contempt at knowing that they 
all went to the photographer's }^esterday, and had their 
pictures taken, after bujing a couple of twenty-five 
cent brooches, on the way, to adorn themselves withal. 
The very things that you yourself would hesitate to 
do, on account of the expense, people who are partially 
dependent on your charity will do without hesitation. 
Where you will practise a natural, cheerful, unthinking 
self-denial, they will practise an equally cheerful and 
unthinking self-indulgence. The remnants of bread 
that you dry in the oven, and save for future use, 
they throw away. The fragmentary vest-sleeve that 
you fashion into a flat-iron holder, they put into the 
rag-bag, and buy new cloth for their holders. Where 
you rise at six, they lie till half-past seven. Where 
you walk, they ride. Where you pray and watch and 
strive to do your work thoroughly, they are content 
with any thing that will answer. That is the reason 
why people are poor. In this country, any man who 
is strong, and willing to work, can support himself, 
and all the family he ought to have. This is not a 

9* 



102 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

sentimental or a picturesque view to take of poverty ; 
but, so far as my observation goes, it is the true one. 
I have been far oftener surprised to see how the will 
to work triumphs over obstacles than I have to see 
how obstacles triumph over the will to work. Right 
and left are women with infant children, incapable or 
invalid or dissipated husbands, surmounting hinder- 
ances, and earning not only a living, but a compe- 
tence, by sheer pluck, or, if that is not an admissible 
word, will. I see men with indifferent health, but 
sturdy self-reliance and creditable pride, by steady 
industry, buying and building houses, lifting mort- 
gages, growing gradually and surely into prominent 
and permanent respectability ; while others, who started 
with apparently equal or superior advantages, falter 
and fail, simply from indolence, or feebleness of pur- 
pose. We pity them; but we also despise them. 
Every healthy mind must despise that trait which 
permits a man or a woman to prefer ignoble ease to 
a dignified though hardly-earned independence ; which 
permits the day-laborer to live bountifully on to-day's 
wages, without laying by any store for the morrow, on 
which he cannot work. Even the beasts of the field 
know better than that. Have we been all our life- 
time reading the fables of bees and butterflies, of 
lad} r bugs and ants, to think now that it is pretty and 
pathetic, and not disgraceful, for a man to be shivering 



OUR CHARITIES. 103 

like a ladybug in the winter time, for which he has 
made no provision? When I see how improvidently 
people will spend their money, in the face of possible 
want, and certain need of economy, I question whether 
our charities have not their unwholesome side. If 
every man knew that he must earn his bread, or go 
without it, would he not be more diligent to earn, and 
more careful not to waste what he did not want ? If 
a drunkard knew that his children would starve unless 
he fed them, would he not put a stronger curb on his 
appetite than now, when he knows they will be taken 
care of, after a fashion ? 

Logic says, If the young man will not go West, 
and feed on the abundant wheat which his own hand 
raises, let him stay East, and die for want of it. If 
the young woman will not become a skilful housewife, 
let her stoop her life out over the needle. If the 
thriving mechanic or factory workman will not lay up 
wages when business is good, let him see his little ones 
perish for lack of food when the mills are closed. 
There is no way to teach providence, except by 
letting persons suffer to the full the consequences of 
improvidence. 

If men feel that fate is inexorable, will they not 
prepare to meet it? It is because they expect some- 
thing to step in, and shield them from the consequences 
of their own acts, that they are so reckless of conse- 



104 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

quences. Mr. Brace gives direct testimony to this 
end. Men, last winter, disdained labor through all the 
country-side, rejected fair wages and useful work, 
because New York offered them bed and board without 
either. Women disdained service, and used without 
scruple the funds of charity to enable them to hold 
out against the demands of trade. Able-bodied pau- 
pers refused fifteen dollars a month with " keep." 
Girls would not work at less than fourteen and twenty 
dollars a month, and would not go into the country at 
all. Suffering artisans refused to work at twelve shil- 
lings a day. With two hundred idle iron-puddlers on 
the list of a single soup-kitchen in New York, iron- 
puddlers had to be sent for from Pennsylvania. 

The experiment never will be tried ; for nobody is 
strictly logical, or will see suffering without relieving 
it, whoever is to blame for it, or is confirmed in his 
sins thereby : but if charity, while holding out relief 
in one hand, would give a good shaking-up with the 
other, it might sometimes be just as serviceable as to 
paint pauperism always as an interesting and romantic 
condition. 

Without detracting a penny from heavenly charity, 
or one drop of cream from the milk of human kind- 
ness, it is well enough to remind ourselves occasion- 
ally, that, in this country of slight government and 
great opportunity, all pauperism, except that which is 



OUR CHARITIES. 105 

caused by innocent illness, or overpowering calamity, 
is somebody's shame ; and every thing that shades into 
it is correspondingly disgraceful, not to be patted 
and petted and pitied, but to be got out of, and away 
from, as fast and as far as possible. 

While we cannot say that logic should, in all cases, 
be carried out to its extreme limit, we cannot read 
such statements as Mr. Brace's without feeling that 
it is dangerous not to use logic in charity as strictly 
as in business. We cannot lay down the law that 
he who cannot help himself is not worth being helped 
by others, since that contradicts the law of humanity 
and of the Sacred Scriptures. But, surely, when men 
have proved themselves so incapable as to need assist- 
ance, the assisting party has a right to dictate condi- 
tions, and to enforce upon the weak the rules which 
have enabled itself to become strong. 

It is far easier to give a dollar to a poor man, or a 
thousand dollars to a soup-house, than it is to inquire 
into the sources of pauperism, and the modes adopted 
for its removal ; but it is to the last degree unpatriotic 
and unchristian. When a poor woman begs at your 
door, it is easier to give her food and clothing than it 
is to follow or accompany her to her own house to 
ascertain the truth of her story, to supply her with 
work, to teach her how to do it, and to put her in the 
way of becoming self-supporting. If the heedless, 



106 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

busy* or selfish giver is remonstrated with, he saj^s, 
" I would rather give to ten impostors than refuse one 
deserving," and hugs himself for a generous and 
benevolent man. But it is not necessary to do either. 
The over-worked lawyer, or tired plumber, may not be 
able to follow up every case of distress that presents 
itself to him ; but it is as easy to delegate that dut} r to 
another as it is to delegate to another his charity-soup, 
instead of brewing the pottage himself. Money and 
wisdom will organize a harmless and beneficent 
charity as truly, if not as easily, as they will organize 
an injurious and unintelligent charity. In Boston, 
beggary is against the law, and all persons are warned 
against bestowing money on beggars. Whoever does 
it knows, at least, that he is doing a work of super- 
erogation, and cannot have the applause even of a 
darkened conscience. 

Unintelligent giving is so hurtful, that its perpetra- 
tion should be made odious. It is giving pleasure to 
ourselves, regardless of the injury we inflict on the 
receiver, or the stumbling-block we put in the way of 
those who are intelligently seeking his welfare. Sup- 
pose a great city trying to elevate its poor, to teach 
them the first principles of political economy, the 
painful ways to honest work, the slow, sure rewards 
of skill, the unerring rules of supply and demand. 
Charity is at its very best in doing this ; and charity 



OUR CHARITIES. 107 

it is, since logic would do it only by starvation and 
suffering. Whatever does it tender^, without pay, 
without anguish, supporting while it teaches, is charity. 
He, then, who strikes across this lesson with some 
entirely irrelevant offer of free lodgings, or free soup, 
to all the needy, tends to throw every thing into confu- 
sion, and does harm instead of good. 

Charity should always couple money with work 
for the able-bodied. It would be better that it should 
be useless work than that there should be no work at 
all. Whoever applies for mone}^, or soup, let him be 
set to work at shoemaking, or a^ form of simple 
work, and paid wages as low as may be sufficient to 
keep him from want ; and, if the revenues of the busi- 
ness be insufficient to pay its expenses, let the deficit 
be met out of the charity fund ; and, if he will not 
work, neither shall he eat. If we could know the 
facts, we should doubtless seldom find need of this. 
In our large country, the supply of labor usually falls 
short of the demand. What we want is not shops for 
fictitious work, but, if necessary, the ability to trans- 
port and apply labor. It seems, even, that we do not 
need bureaus to regulate such transportation ; for they 
already exist. The two hundred iron-puddlers sipping 
the charity-soup of New York were not unneeded 
laborers, who should have been sent to empty Pennsyl- 
vania mills : on the contrary, the New York mills 



108 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

had to send to Pennsylvania for puddlers, while these 
paupers fed at the public feeding-troughs. Mr. Brace 
advertised largely that they were ready to send labor 
where capital was loudly calling for it ; but labor re- 
fused to go. It preferred to stay in the city, to fatten 
on charity, and herd with idleness and vice. This 
being the case, I see no reason why the indiscriminate 
alms-giver in New York is not a malefactor, large 
or small, according to the scale on which he works. 
The real workers of the community are preyed upon 
by the idlers ; and the rich help on their spoliation. 
The householders are deprived of the help which they 
ought to have in the kitchen ; the manufacturers, of the 
hands which should guide engine and loom, because 
outsiders step in to drown the natural regulations of 
supply and demand in a swash of free soup. 

If the kind-hearted and the benevolent, the great 
majority of our self-supporting population, would 
either turn their gifts into the established channels of 
charity, or acquaint themselves thoroughly with the 
persons whom they wish to relieve, they would do all 
the good, and feel all the pleasure, which they now do, 
without impoverishing themselves, without injuring the 
poor, and without deteriorating society. It would no 
longer be possible for "able-bodied paupers" to prey 
upon the industrious and self-respecting. That u able- 
bodied paupers " should exist in and be supported by 

9* 



OUR CHARITIES. 109 

a city where girls refuse thirteen dollars a month be- 
sides their board, and where men refuse nine shillings 
a da} T , is a burden upon the worthy poor and the hon- 
est rich too great to be borne. Let Charity be wise as 
well as kind. Let her help the incapable, and not 
pauper the lazy, or encourage the stubborn. As it is, 
this flower of our civilization shows a bad tendency to 
become a weed, and to overrun, and overshadow with 
its rank mischief, the ground which should be occupied 
by growths that are pleasant to the eye, and good for 
food, and to be desired to make one wise. 

We- have allowed matters so to adjust themselves, 
that " tramps" are getting to be a distinct and 
dangerous class. They were always a nuisance ; 
but now, from an annoying, they have become a 
menacing, nuisance. In ancient days an "old strag- 
gler" produced a sensation in a village. The school- 
children scented him from afar, and, with swift heels 
and scant breath, reported him to their comrades, 
huddled into the schoolhouse, watched him by, behind 
barred windows and bolted doors, and followed him, 
retreating, at a safe distance. At the rare and hospi- 
table farmhouses the " old straggler " called, modest, 
and "sensing" the situation. He never drank: he 
had no thirst for intoxicating liquor, but was generally 
a prey to some disease for which "a little saleratus 
and cider ' - was the sovereignest thing on earth ; and I 



110 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

doubt not many a bearded man remembers the curi- 
osity with which he watched the wayfarer's eager hold, 
rapt eyes, and negligence of breath, as he pressed the 
cider pitcher upside down to his longing lips, loath to 
lose one drop of possible delight. As we have arrived 
at man's estate ourselves, we have seen the u old 
straggler " coming thicker and faster ; but he is not so 
old as he was. He is shabby enough ; but he is usually 
a young fellow, able-bodied, out of work, and travel- 
ling to Portsmouth. Sometimes he is fierce and Span- 
ish-looking ; but oftener he is sandy-haired, sunburned, 
and freckled, ill-favored, but not brigandish. He 
seldom asks for money, but is perpetually hungry. If 
you give him a remainder biscuit with an apolog3 r , he 
accepts gratefully, with the assurance that it is " firs' - 
rate," while, if you proffer a generous slice of squash 
pie fresh from the oven, ten to one but you shall 
go out to find it dashed against your garden wall. I 
do not so much mind the wasted viand, though that 
grieves me to the heart ; but the spretce injuria formce, 
the slight put upon my cooking, for all the neighbors 
to see, — that I never will forgive. Nor do we, like 
them of old time, invite these wa}^farers to the kitchen 
to warm their frozen fingers by the glowing hearth- 
stone. A seat on the sunny side of the door-step is 
the most cordial invitation they receive, and that with 
locks and bolts well secured ; for their humility and 



OUR CHARITIES 111 

harmlessness seem to be deserting them. They come 
no longer singly, but in squads. They have ceased to 
beg : they demand. Their tramp has become their 
profession. Their spare money they evidently spend 
in clubs, knives, and revolvers. We scarcely take up 
a newspaper without reading of some outrage and 
violence perpetrated by a tramp. They rob, burn, 
murder. They attack men and women and children. 
They travel in couples and quartets, evidently divid- 
ing up the houses among themselves. Some of our 
laws seem especially made for their nurture ; or is it 
that our American institutions are so flexible, that the 
tramps easily bend them to their own advantage? 
Every town is obliged, by law, to find lodging and food 
for wayfarers : so the tramps are assured of bed and 
board ; and if the landlord or landlady secured for 
them be of congenial spirit, the gj'psies live in clover. 
A little village of eight hundred inhabitants is so 
generously disposed toward the poor, that its chronic 
paupers have been distinguished for the elegance of 
their dress ; and twenty-five dollars have been paid 
for a single night's lodging of the vagabonderie. Of 
course, these nomads know when they are well off: so 
they u cut and come again." I have seen parties of 
four and six walking back and forth on the outskirts 
of the village, waiting till it was dark enough to make 
their request for lodgings legal. And so great is their 



112 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

liking for their hospitable quarters, that they are sure 
not to go so far off that they cannot return at night- 
fall. This is, perhaps, a good way to prevent crime, 
since the scoundrels have all they want, and are not 
tempted to violence ; but it is also an excellent way to 
nurse vice. And it is, it must be confessed, a little 
burdensome to the proud and haughty, who prefer not 
to beg, and who are therefore forced to work. 

Vagabondage, if it be not made a crime, should at 
least work forfeiture of freedom. If tramps are to be 
supported by honest men, honest men should at least 
have the power to say in what manner the tramps shall 
be supported. It is unfair for the farmer to work 
hard in the hot hayfield all day or the shoemaker 
in his little cramped-up shop, and then be obliged 
to take a part of his small earnings to feed and 
lodge a lazy fellow who has been lying under a 
hedge till sundown, and w&o will break into his house, 
and steal his goods, and murder his wife, if he gets 
the chance or the provocation. Responsibility implies 
authority. As long as a man is obliged to support his 
children, he has authority over his children. If a 
grown man is not self-supporting, he should not be 
self-directing. Some towns have borne all the burden 
they feel disposed to bear, and are arresting tramps in 
all directions, determined to test their liabilities. Pub- 
lic sentiment will doubtless approve their course ; but, 



OUR CHARITIES. 113 

unless public sentiment formulates itself in common 
law, these local measures will but increase local dis- 
tress. If one village, by village law, arrests tramps, 
and the next village does not, the second village will 
be but a receiving-tomb for the decayed humanit} T of 
the first. These vermin, driven out of the one town, 
will take refuge in the next ; and the last state of that 
town shall be worse than its first. It should be a rec- 
ognized State law, if it be not now, that an}' person 
asking alms from door to door thereby forfeits his 
liberty. In surrendering the self-support of manhood, 
he surrenders also its self-control. The community 
that feeds him shall restrain him. If he will eat the 
bread of beggary, it shall be behind a barred gate. 
He shall not walk up and down, seeking what and 
whom he ma}' devour ; but he shall have keepers, and 
be made to work : he shall lie down, and rise up, and 
march to table and field and workshop, at the voice of 
the bell. He shall have abundance of wholesome food, 
but no squash pie to bespatter stone fences withal ! 
He shall not batten longer on the toils of honest men ; 
but he shall eat his bread in the sweat of his own fat 
face ; and the only difference between his fate and that 
of his thrifty brother shall be, that, while the latter 
goes home to wife and child, and vine and fig-tree, the 
former shall have neither ownership nor accumulation. 
If a man find that he must work as hard for bare walls 
10* 



114 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

and coarse food as for home and family, and all social 
solace and standing, it would be but an evil choice for 
him to make. Let us take off the premium from vaga- 
bondage ; let us make the tramp's life as stern and 
severe as that of the honest citizen ; let society close 
upon him, short, sharp, and decisive, and either make 
a spoon, or spoil a horn. 

All of which does not mean that the honest and 
industrious but unfortunate laboring-man out of 
employment shall be treated as a tramp, or that the 
tramp shall not be considered as " a man and a 
brother." Constraint and labor are means of grace to 
the man who spurns both, and preys upon his neigh- 
bors ; while the honest man out of work has no worse 
foe than these lazzaroni, who drain a community of the 
sympathy and succor which ought to be bestowed upon 
those who need help, but not alms. 

Physicians tell us that the great stone hospitals on 
which we latter-day saints pride ourselves, as embodying 
the last results of sanitary science, are, of all estab- 
lishments, the most pernicious. The seeds of disease 
are sown in them from year to year, and are ever 
springing up in a fatal harvest. With all our knowledge 
and all our money, the best kind of hospital is the 
cheap wooden barrack, which can be torn down every 
three years, and thus prevent the storing-up and dis- 
tribution of disease, to which the enduring stone build- 



OUR CHARITIES. 115 

ing is always liable. Is it not possible that some 
similar necessity exists with regard to our great char- 
itable institutions? 

There are soldiers' homes scattered over the land. 
This is a form of charity as little offensive as it is 
possible for charity to be. Indeed, I do not know that 
it should be called charity at all. Surely, if debt can 
exist between man and man, it is incurred by the 
nation toward those who have perilled life and limb in 
her behalf. So the nation does well to provide a home 
for disabled soldiers. She rears a lofty and imposing 
structure, laj-s out grounds with taste and elegance, 
keeps every thing in admirable order, receives all poor 
and wounded and invalid soldiers who knock at her 
door, feeds them, clothes them if need be, furnishes 
them pension for pocket-money, lays them under no 
grievous restriction, and imposes no labor. If you 
drive to their retreat, you see them sauntering along 
the gravelled walks, reclining under the trees, lounging 
upon the piazza, or perhaps engaged in some light 
work. But, after all, it is a most dreary place, — a 
mockery of home. You are struck by the absence of 
life. There is no interest, no animation, no vitality. 
All is lounging and listlessness. I have been told that 
soldiers enter these homes with reluctance, and leave 
them with alacrity. There is no complaint of ill-treat- 
ment, insufficient food or care : it is simply that their 



116 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

dreariness is insupportable. Can we wonder at it? 
Think of fifty or a hundred men living together in a 
perfectly comfortable house, with nothing to do ! They 
have no care, no responsibility, no occupation, no soci- 
ety but each other. As soldiers, they have had stir- 
ring, active, eventful lives. Doubtless, at first, the 
quiet, the rest, is delightful ; but when wounds are 
healed, and life flows once more in all the channels that 
are left, how these human hearts must long for the 
variety, and even for the vexations, of humanity, for 
the activities of manhood, the attraction of woman- 
hood, the amusement of childhood ! In every estab- 
lishment, ought we not to take the family as the model ? 
So far as our institutions depart from the family type, 
are they not on a wrong principle ? Is it practicable ? 
And, if practicable, is it not better that the fifty 
soldiers should be distributed through the community, 
to live in, and become a part of, separate homes, rather 
than live together in a monotonous and unnatural club ? 
They need not be " town-poor," but national pen- 
sioners, honorable, though dependent ; receiving their 
support from the country, not as a gratuity, but as 
some attempt at an equivalent for services rendered. 
Many, perhaps most, of them, though partially dis- 
abled, are not incapacitated for light labor, and would 
be all the healthier and happier for its performance. 
They may not be able to do man's work; but they 



OUR CHARITIES. 117 

could be exceedingly useful in doing what is too often 
added to woman's work. There are thousands of 
farmhouses where these men could amply pay their 
board by doing u chores " that now fall to the lot of 
overworked women. Many families who could not 
endure the incumbrance of a boarder, nor afford the 
outlay of hired service, would be greatly relieved by 
such an addition to their staff. The man would quickly 
work into a pleasant and profitable position, and join 
in the wholesome life from which the far more splendid 
surroundings of the home completely shut him out. 
It may not be immediately nor entirely practicable ; 
but can we not hold this end in view? 

There is an insurmountable repugnance in the minds 
of many poor people to technical places of refuge. It 
is not independence ; for they will receive without 
flinching, in their own miserable homes, an amount of 
assistance at a cost of trouble, thought, and care far 
greater than would be necessary to support them com- 
fortably at the poor-house, or, as we have taken to 
calling it, the " home ; " though we do not succeed by 
our euphuisms in deceiving our victims, who draw 
back from the " home " as decidedly as from the poor- 
house. We are at great expense to provide an asylum 
for old men, a home for aged and indigent females ; 
and the old men throw their cane at you, if you propose 
to take them there ; and the aged and indigent females 



118 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

grow young and rich in the vocabulary wherewithal 
they declare their determination not to go. This 
means something. Of course, we can make them 
go if we choose. Society is a giant, and can use its 
strength giant-wise, to be strong against the weak. 
But it is not pleasant, even when it is necessary : how 
much less when it is not certainly necessary ! Perhaps 
the weak are right, and, haply, we shall be found to 
fight against God. Instead, then, of giving all our 
energies to the preparation of a house, why not devote 
a part to the accumulation of a fund whereby these 
poor, who so profoundly dislike the more public forms 
of charity, may be supported in private homes ? There 
are many families whose income would be materially 
improved by the small sum which would be payed for 
the support of a woman incapable of self-support, but 
not needing any especial care or nursing. A board of 
overseers, or a ladies' committee, could still supervise 
affairs, keep track of all its beneficiaries, watch over 
their interests, look out for their comfort. And the 
old ladies themselves would often be far happier in the 
humble but more cosey, more sociable, more natural, 
if more narrow, home, than in the spacious, abundant, 
but public and unfamiliar "refuge." Beggars should 
not be choosers perhaps : still, if we give, we may 
well give wisely. The poor may be unreasonable ; 
and their poverty is often their own fault. But, after 



OUR CHARITIES. 119 

all, we would a thousand times rather be ourselves, 
with the annoyance of their unreasonableness, than to 
be the poor, with all their dictation. In the general 
distribution of traits, we are glad those fell to our 
share which enabled us to be independent, though at 
the cost of much hard work and self-denial. We are 
thankful that we can work, that we can turn away 
from the present pleasure to avert the future disaster. 
I would make pauperism as odious as possible ; but 
I would make the helpless victims of pauperism as 
happy as possible. We cannot be too careful not to 
loosen the foundations of self-respect, not to make it 
seem easy and pleasant and natural to depend upon 
others, instead of helping one's self, not to make this 
false life of leaning too closely resemble the true life 
of uprightness. Yet, on the other hand, there is so 
much wretched dependence springing from age, sex, 
infirmity, calamity, the error and the crime of other 
people, that one cannot be too careful in applying even 
just rules, — too gentle, too wise, too considerate in 
guarding from additional pain those who are already 
sore wounded and vanquished in life's hot battle. 

If our modes of disbursing our charity funds need 
to be carefully looked into, so, also, do our modes of 
gathering those funds. The old type ideal of charity 
is a quiet, modest, retiring, and gracious lady, search- 
ing out the abodes of suffering, ministering to the sick, 



120 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

teaching the ignorant, giving of her substance, but 
always unobtrusive, never letting the left hand know 
what the right hand doeth. The real Lady Charity 
seemeth to be somewhat of a brazen dame, sedulously 
seeking her own pleasure in the name of the poor. 
She institutes a charity ball, whither she goes dressed 
in all the silk and lace and jewelry of luxury, or,' 
worse still, in calico fashioned in such fantastic shapes, 
that neither rich nor poor can make any use of it after- 
wards. She dances all night ; she devours creams and 
cakes, salads and coffee ; she breathes the fragrance 
of flowers, and moves to the music of a band, and in 
all things disports herself like a lady bent on her own 
amusement ; and is altogether satisfied and satisfactory 
because it is a charity ball. The few hundreds that 
may be left after the thousands are paid out for dress 
and flowers, and lights and music, and supper and 
hall and carriages and attendance, are given to the 
poor ; but charity has only the crumbs that fell from 
the table. The table itself — the bulk of the expense 
and the effort — was in the entertainment. I do not 
sa}' there is any thing wrong in this, except the name. 
If persons find their account in weeks of preparation, 
and much sounding of the tocsin, and soliciting of 
patronage, for the sake of an evening's pleasure, who 
shall gainsay them? Doubtless there are some, perhaps 
the originators and organizers of the ball, to whom 



OUR CHARITIES. 121 

it is really a labor of love ; but, in all its length and 
breadth, let us not call it charity. To the deserv- 
ing and suffering poor, to the invalids, the widowed, 
the orphan, who know not to-day what they shall eat 
on the morrow, it must be a strange sight indeed, — 
this of men and women rushing together to expend on 
a single evening's gratification for themselves, and in 
various forms of luxmy, an enormous sum of money in 
order that a small sum may slip through into the out- 
stretched hands of want. If, indeed, the small dole 
can be entreated from the rich in no other way than by 
bribing them with a fete for themselves ; if the pleasure 
of blessing be not enough, but must be sweetened with 
the pleasure of receiving ; if giving have no grace, and 
money must bring to the donor money's worth in mar- 
ketable values, — then, perhaps, we do well to make a 
feast, and call in the rich and prosperous to make 
crumbs for the poor and the maimed, the halt and the 
blind ; but this is not charity. When the Philistines 
ask, i ' What meaneth the noise of this great shouting 
in the camp ? ' ' let no man have the effrontery to say, 
" It is because the ark of the Lord has come in." It is 
far more like the song of the worship of the golden ear- 
rings. Nine parts self-indulgence, and one part charity, 
may not be an iniquitous compound ; but it is certainly 
not the elixir of life. The clangor of our benefactions 
does not mark their increase, but their diminution. 
11 



122 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

In connection with this public hue and cry comes a 
spirit of dictation, a virtual coercion, which it seems 
offensive to resist, and hypocritical to accept. It is to 
be expected, that, in the rattle and clatter of machin- 
ery, all the ancient delicacy of charity, both on the 
part of giver and receiver, should fade away. When 
men scatter their largesses from the housetops, with 
bells ringing, and flags floating, they lose every pretext 
for blushing to find it fame. They are far more 
likely to redden with rage, if they do not find it fame. 
We appeal for charity, not to the necessity of the 
case, to the conscience or the pity of the beholder, but 
to his vanity, his pride, his self-interest. A church 
debt is auctioneered from the pulpit on Sunday. ' ' I 
will give a thousand dollars," says A to B, " if you 
will give a thousand dollars.' ' But what has A's 
purse to do with B's ? If the case is a worthy one, or, 
in any case, why should one man's help be conditioned 
on another man's? A knows, or ought to know, the 
condition of his own finances. He knows nothing of 
B's. If he can give a thousand dollars, let him give 
it. He has no right to dictate the direction, or the 
amount, of B's gifts, or to subject him to the necessity 
of refusing, or of giving reluctantly. Benevolence is 
no justification of impertinence. What is ill bred and 
improper, dictatorial and rude, does not become polite 
and gentle and Christian, because it is done in the 



OUR CHARITIES. 123 

name of charity. There are some forms of charity 
which seem to do more harm to the soul than good 
to the body. They injure the manners of the givers 
more than they benefit the lives of the receivers. All 
such charity is suspicious. The true charity blesses 
him that gives, and him that takes. The true charity 
is as strong in its reflex as in its direct influence. It 
shines all around, and not in one straight line alone. 
It is marked by the most instinctive reticence, and a 
constant courtesy of demeanor. It represses the 
forward, and encourages the timid, and respects the 
self-respectful, and tries to infuse into the shameless 
a sense of shame. It reverences the dignity of 
humanity, and the rights of the individual, and never 
encroaches upon the poor or the rich. It assumes 
no power of inquisition into the lowliest cottage, 
the shabbiest hut, any more or any less than into the 
houses of the great and strong. It is not bars, or bolts, 
or servants, or force, that guide or guard its entrance 
anywhere, but its own innate, unerring, ever sinuous 
sense of propriety. And, while it is thus cautious of 
imposing itself on the reluctant, it is equally solicitous 
to win the confidence of the silent and forlorn. It 
aims to do good, rather than to excite gratitude ; to 
give the feeble a start, rather than to make a stir in 
society. It would rather help a man to help himself 
than to make his own exertions unnecessary. 



124 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

I believe we are mistaken in supposing that this 
kind of charity would be less heartily supported than 
the festive, luxuriant, and selfish charity. Men may 
be reluctant to put a new carpet on the parish church ; 
and it may be necessary to cajole them with a tea- 
party. But, towards human want, human nature is 
apt to be generous. The carpet is not a necessity. 
But men will not willingly let a family suffer for want 
of food. I do not believe the community exists in 
America, that is not willing and able to provide for all 
its needy without an atom of fanfaronade. When 
Portland and Peshtigo and Chicago are burned, and 
Louisiana drowned, and the valleys of our own New 
England overs wept by sudden desolation, there is no 
waiting for balls and theatres. The money does not 
wind through fairs and fashions, diminishing as it goes, 
to fall, at last, a feeble, and sluggish stream, into a 
thirsty soil that drinks it up, and gives no sign. It 
rushes straight from purse and till, — an impetuous, 
sustaining, and sufficient flood. Great occasions 
bring great enthusiasms ; and, for ordinary occasions, 
the enthusiasm of humanity is enough. If wisely 
appealed to, it seldom fails to respond. The beating 
of gongs is as unnecessary- to secure the desired ends 
as it is offensive to good taste, and obnoxious to good 
manners. A charity that is indelicate in its methods 
is a proper object of suspicion. So far as possible, 



OUR CHARITIES, 125 

all the processes, and all the recipients, of charity, 
should be guarded by a profound and sacred privacy, 
that self-respect be not wounded, character injured, 
nor truth destroyed. 

Miss Cushman, with characteristic independence, 
good sense, and good feeling, has entered a protest 
against this system. The occasion was a request, 
which had been made, that she would give a gratuitous 
representation for the benefit of local charities in, let us 
sa} T , Venice. In response to this protest, one of her 
rejected addressers says, " No actress in the country 
has been more generously and heartily rewarded in 
Venice than Miss Cushman. She has always been 
a favorite here, and been always treated with uniform 
courtesy and kindness. We will not say that she has 
not, in a measure, by her genius commanded all that 
has been accorded to her : but, at the same time, we 
believe that there are certain relations of good-will and 
friendship which should always exist between actors 
and the public ; and that, if any one in the country in 
her profession is under obligations to a community, 
Miss Cushman is to Venice." 

All of which may be true, without, in the smallest 
degree, militating against Miss Cushman's position, that 
she is under no " especial" obligations to any commu- 
nity in which she does not live. The people who go to 
theatres and concerts, who buy bonnets and gowns and 
11* 



126 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

shoes and sugar, are often spoken of as patrons of the 
singers and players and grocers and milliners ; and so 
they are, but no more so than are the grocers and mil- 
liners the patrons of those who buy their goods. You 
go to the theatre for your own amusement, and not in 
the least to oblige Miss Cushman, or Mr. Jefferson, or 
Mr. Boucicault. If they play well enough to please, 
3^ou go again : if they do not, you stay away, regard- 
less of their feelings or their purses. If they play so 
well, that high admission-fees may be profitably charged, 
you pay the high admission -fee, still not in the least to 
profit Miss Cushman or Mr. Boucicault, but because 
you cannot get in on a small fee. No one thinks of 
patronizing an inferior actor from motives of benevo- 
lence ; and it is pure absurdity to say that one is actu- 
ated by benevolence in enjoying the personations of a 
master of his art. Why, then, should an actor be 
obliged to you for pleasing yourself ? Why should 
the shoemaker be obliged to you for the money whose 
lack would make him less uncomfortable than you 
would be in going barefoot? If there is any obliga- 
tion, it is as much on the one side as on the other. 
Venice is just as much bound to help Miss Cushman' s 
charities as is Miss Cushman to help Venice. The 
family ought to be quite as grateful to the butcher and 
grocer and milkman who feed it, as ought they to be 
to the family which pa} T s them money. But did Miss 



OUR CHARITIES. 127 

Cushman ever imply that Venice owed lief any thing? 
or did Venice ever recognize any such relation ? She 
is reported to have met with much pecuniary and other 
trouble. Did Venice ever concern itself to ascertain, 
remove, or relieve these troubles ? Did it ever make 
any inquiries as to Miss Cushman' s necessities, or 
pensioners, and ask to bear a part of her burdens? I 
have pushed no researches on the subject, and, of tes- 
timony, know nothing whatever about it ; but I hazard 
the assertion, without fear of contradiction, that, what- 
ever of trouble Miss Cushman may have met, she has 
encountered it without asking or thinking of help from 
Venice ; that her connection with the city has been 
purely one of business ; and that whatever money she 
has received has been in exchange for goods sold at 
their market-value. At the same time, such are " the 
relations of good- will and friendship " existing be- 
tween her and the Venice public, that if, by some sud- 
den turn of the wheel of fortune, she should be known 
to be ill, destitute, and suffering, Venice, no doubt, 
would take up a generous contribution, and send it 
to her with such warm admiration and delicacy as 
would fill her with rejoicing. So, I doubt not, if 
Venice were suddenly smitten with overwhelming dis- 
aster of fire or flood, Miss Cushman, with her great 
generous heart, would give abundantly for its relief. 
Great emergencies bring " especial" claims ; but that 



128 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

Miss Cushman should come down from Boston, or that 
Venice should go up to New England, to help out the 
ordinary duties of every-day life is — not reasonable. 

" There is another point in this five-hundred-dollar- 
a-night business," says the disappointed applicant. 
"Does Miss Cushman really think that she earns it? 
She gets it ; but we beg to remind her that she wrings 
it out of the managers, under the villanous ' star ' sys- 
tem, and at the expense of the poor and humble in her 
own profession, who, in a large degree, contribute to her 
success, and who are not paid as much in a year as 
she is paid in almost a single night. She enforces her 
five hundred dollars a night, demands her pound of 
flesh ; and they must take what they can get. Miss 
Cushman looks at the matter from a thoroughly selfish, 
heartless standpoint." 

It would not be easy to crowd more erring philoso- 
phy into a single pronunciamento. Miss Cushman, 
doubtless, being a woman of unusual grandeur of 
character, looks at her business-engagements from a 
thoroughly business standpoint ; and business is and 
ought ever to be thoroughly heartless and selfish. To 
make it any thing else is to embroil and despoil it. 
To mix sentiment with business is to profane the one, 
and to demoralize the other. But business is heartless 
and selfish etymologically, not morally. It is heartless 
precisely as mathematics is heartless. You might as 



OUR CHARITIES, 129 

well blame a problem in Euclid for its lack of pity, as 
to blame business for a similar deficienc} r . The one 
principle of business is to buy in the cheapest, and sell 
in the dearest, market ; and it is a thoroughly just 
and legitimate principle, and thoroughly compatible 
with generosity and magnanimity in the man who acts 
upon it. Indeed, there is no other principle on which 
business could be successfully and satisfactorily con- 
ducted. 

Miss Cushman, in demanding five hundred dollars a 
night, is but doing what every merchant does in de- 
manding an extraordinary price for an extraordinary 
piece of Gobelin tapestry ; or a milliner of rare skill, in 
charging high prices for her bonnets ; or Mr. Evarts, in 
taking a ten-thousand-dollar fee in one lawsuit ; or Mr. 
Beecher, in receiving his twenty-or-so-thousand dollar 
salary. Does -Mr. Evarts imagine he earns his enor- 
mous retainer ? He gets it ; but we beg to remind him 
that he wrings it out of his clients, and at the expense 
of the poor and humble of his own profession, who are 
not paid as much in a lifetime, perhaps, as he is paid 
in a single month. Mr. Evarts enforces his pound of 
flesh ; and the poor pettifogger must take what he can 
get! 

You might just as well reproach a diamond for cost- 
ing more than a Scotch pebble as to blame Miss Cush- 
man or Mr. Evarts for being more expensive than their 



130 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

"supes." We pay for things in proportion to their 
rarity and to the pleasure they give us. The u star" 
system may be vile ; but, when it is superseded, it will 
not be because it is vile, but because it is unprofitable. 
Miss Cushman's high demands not only injure no one, 
but benefit many. The managers, on the whole, find 
it for their interest to be wrung out by Charlotte Cush- 
man rather than cast their play without her. No one 
forces them to employ her. It is only, that, if they do 
employ her, they must pay her price. So far from 
injuring the poor and humble of her own profession, it 
is she, and such as she, who give them any profession 
at all. Who would go to a theatre to see the pitiful 
mouthing and ranting and strutting, the wooden, 
lifeless performances, of the lower class of actors? 
" Can't you say it so? " said Edwin Forrest, instruct- 
ing one of his u supports." " Confound you ! " cried 
the poor fellow, in admiring despair, "if I could say 
it so, do you think I would be pegging away here at 
ten dollars a week ! " It is because Forrest can " say 
it so," that we listen patiently to Tom, Dick, and 
Harry all around him, saying things in quite another 
way. Miss Cushman is far more necessary to her 
poor supporters than they are to her. When she reads 
absolutely alone, she draws crowded houses. How 
many crowds would they draw without the allurement 
of any superior talent? 



OUR CHARITIES. 131 

Miss Cushman, in enforcing high prices for her per- 
formances, is doing more for her sex and her profes- 
sion than she can do in any other way. No one can 
excel in any calling without diffusing the benefit of it 
down through the very lowest stratum of that calling. 
His genius and skill raise the average, help to make 
the calling honorable. It goes much " against the 
grain ' ' to pay twenty dollars for a bonnet whose ma- 
terial cost five dollars ; but the milliner has a perfect 
right to charge fifteen for her skill and taste. She may 
overshoot the mark ; and the just result is, that her 
bonnets are not sold. But these things arrange them- 
selves on the everlasting principle of supply and de- 
mand. It may be very sad that the poor sewing-girl 
gets but starvation wages, while the mistress grows 
rich. But poor sewing is as the sands of the sea for 
multitude ; and artistic sewing is like the diamonds 
of Golconda. Moreover, every new prime sewer and 
fashioner creates a demand which gives employment to 
the poor and plodding. The i 6 star ' ' has given to its 
brilliancy care, time, and culture, of which the clod 
knows nothing, and for lack of which it has only itself 
to blame. But also the "star" had an original en- 
dowment denied to the clod, for which the clod is not 
to blame ; but neither is the " star." Is there wrong 
with the Most High? 

Since writing this, a remarkably apt illustration has 



132 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

been given of the obligations which Venice considers 
due from the public toward those actors who have 
entertained it, whatever its views may be of the obli- 
gations of actors to the public. Mr. J. M. Belle w, 
the reader, being sick and poor, has applied for help 
to the public. Venice says, through her press, that he 
" is certainly the most genteel beggar that has yet 
appeared. Being sick, and nearly out of funds, he 
sends telegrams all over the world, stating that he has 
no prospects of getting better very soon, and would be 
thankful for any assistance that may be rendered him. 
Who wouldn't feel overjoyed at receiving aid and 
succor through such novel means? In case the re- 
sponses are heavy and full, we would advise Mr. Bel- 
lew to engage a clerk to acknowledge the receipt of 
remittances. There are plenty of young men out of 
employment in England who would be glad to secure 
such a position." 

I do not see why it was a more genteel beggary for 
Mr. Bellew to telegraph to the world for charity than 
it was for Venice to telegraph to Miss Cushman. Cer- 
tainly her response was not half so scornful, and, I 
suspect, not more unproductive. 

When Miss Cushman said, " You simply ask of me 
that I should give from four hundred dollars to five 
hundred dollars to your poor," the seeker replies, 
" We did not ask Miss Cushman to do any thing of 



OUR CHARITIES, 133 

the kind. We asked her if she would give an extra 
performance, and did not propose to interfere in any 
way with her regular engagements. . . . Perhaps she 
is right, and that we were wrong, in asking her to give 
a few hours of her time to a charitable object." 

This illustrates a very common mistake made by 
persons in whom goodness of heart, let us say, out- 
strips clearness of head. They have a certain desira- 
ble object in view ; and, to promote it, they will, with 
the most cheerful and unhesitating frankness, ask you 
to give, not money (they would shrink from that), 
but things which represent money to you, which bring 
money to you, and which will bring money to them — 
and think they are doing the whole duty of etiquette. 
Ask Miss Cushman to give us five hundred dollars ? 
Not we ! We simply ask her to give a representation 
which always brings her five hundred dollars, and to 
hand over the proceeds to us, instead of putting them 
into her own purse. Ask her for money? Nothing 
was further from our thoughts ! We did but ask a few 
hours of her time. Ask her to give us one of her 
regular engagements, and so diminish her income? 
Not in the least ! We did not interfere with her regu- 
lar engagements, but desired her to grant an extra 
performance. 

But lives there a man with soul so keen as can 
explain the difference between five hundred dollars in 



134 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

money at high noon and a performance that brings five 
hundred dollars before midnight? What is the saving 
clause that makes a regular performance a part of 
your income, and an extra performance no income 
whatever? An actor, during the season, makes, un- 
doubtedly, as many engagements as his nerve and the 
public purse will stand. If an extra one comes in, he 
must make extra outlay of personal power, or with- 
draw an engagement elsewhere. But, however that 
may be, if he can earn the money, the money is his ; 
and, if it is bestowed upon the poor, he bestows it, and 
nobody else. 

I sa}^ nothing of the nature of the actor's calling, 
since it has no bearing on the case. We may approve, 
or disapprove, of theatrical representation. If we dis- 
approve, the impropriety is even stronger than if we 
approve. It is bad enough to make unwarrantable 
claims upon money honestly and honorably earned ; 
but it is startling indeed, if we may oppose an actress 
in the performance of her art by every form of moral 
resistance, and, when she has earned the money in 
spite of us, we may levy upon her to sustain our own 
scheme. 

Does the artist give only a few hours of her time ? 
If so, then suppose you select the three or four hours 
that she is taking a railroad journey. Let her con- 
tribute the proceeds of the three hours that she is 
12 



OUR CHARITIES. 135 

making morning-calls, or indulging in a siesta. Those 
are the hours of her time as truly as the hours during 
which she is performing on the stage. But those hours 
bring no money. So it is not that she gives simply 
three hours of her time. She gives time that is filled 
to the brim with her gifts and graces. She gives you 
all the native genius, the control, the hard study, the 
assiduous practice, the vital power, the travel and self- 
control, the fame and glory, which make her three 
hours of time worth more in hard money than three 
years of the kitchen-maid's. Her empty time is worth 
no more than yours or mine. 

You go to the lawyer for advice, which he condenses 
into an hour, and for which you pay five, twenty, a 
hundred dollars. It is not for his hour's time, but for 
the three years of preparatory study, and four years of 
college, and three years of law school, and days and 
nights of laborious research and continuous applica- 
tion, that make him capable of answering your question, 
and make his answer worth to you a hundred times 
what you pay him for it. 

The grocer, who would be considered munificent in 
giving 3'ou five dollars, is churlish if he will not give 
five dollars' worth of flour to your charity, and nig- 
gardly to the last degree, if he refuses to sell whatever 
you want at cost price. The doctor is expected to 
make out no bill against his poor patients. The edi- 



136 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

tor sends his newspaper to clergymen at half-price. 
The author is asked to send fifteen or twenty dollars' 
worth of books to a remote society, whose money 
donors average a dollar and a half apiece ; and the 
feuilletoniste, to contribute a twenty, thirty, or fifty 
dollar article to the c ' paper " of some unknown fair, 
edited by citizen amateurs, whose services in that 
capacity would not bring fifty cents in any known 
market. If a knot of young men in Omaha desired to 
form a reading-club, they would not dream of asking 
the proprietors of a newspaper for five dollars to pay 
room-rent ; but if Messrs. Proprietors have not been 
repeatedly requested to send their publications free, by 
way of encouragement, to incipient and impecunious 
reading-clubs, their experience is different from that 
of most publishing-firms whose ways I have known. 
Beggary of goods seems a very easy Christian duty and 
worldly pleasure to people who would count beggary 
of money a thing improper, and deleterious to self- 
respect. 

None of these requests are unkindly meant, though 
a refusal is sometimes rudely met. They spring from 
a forge tfulness, or unacquaintance with the fact, that 
whatever is worth costs ; that labor and products are 
as valuable as the money for which they could be sold ; 
that to ask a man to give that by which he gets his 
living is just the same as to ask him for his living. If 



OUR CHARITIES. 137 

the butcher choose to give meat, instead of money, 
that is his own affair ; but to ask him for meat is pre- 
cisely the same as to ask him for money ; and to ask 
him to sell meat at cost price is the same as to ask him 
for all the money which constitutes his profit ; and, if 
he refuse to give meat, }^ou have no more right to call 
him selfish or heartless, than he has to call you stingy 
because you do not have beefsteak or veal-cutlets every 
morning for breakfast. You have no more right to 
dictate a man's charities than you have to dictate his 
courtship. Especially have you no right even to pass 
judgment upon the stranger that is far off from thy 
gates, — the stranger whom you do not know, whose life 
is remote from yours, with whose circumstances, and 
daily surroundings, and personal connections, you are 
utterly unfamiliar. To hold up such an one to oppro- 
brium, because he declines to contribute to a distant 
charity, is to hazard the reputation of your own judg- 
ment. No one can say whether another is, or is not, 
justified in withholding alms, until he knows all the 
sources of that other's income, all his channels of 
outflow, all the circumstances of all his family and 
acquaintance, all the system of his life, and all his 
plans for the future. On the whole, the lesson is so 
hard, that he would probably employ his time to more 
advantage by pushing his researches in other direc- 
tions. 



138 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

Many of us who would never think of dictating the 
charities of others are yet never weary of inculcating, 
and even practising, economy, that money may thereby 
be saved to bestow upon the poor ; and think we are 
doing God service. 

Economy has a good sound, a very innocent and 
even virtuous sound ; but how are we to economize ? 
and who is to economize ? and what are we about to 
economize for? and at whose cost shall the economy 
be ? I should say, first, that if the winter is to be a 
hard winter for the poor, if it is to be scanty of labor, 
and meagre in wages, the first duty of all persons is, 
not to retrench unless they are obliged to retrench. 
Charity is apt to be unwholesome and demoralizing. 
Let us see that it is clad in its least offensive forms. 
The rich man whose income is not seriously affected, 
or at least not reduced to the demands he makes upon 
it, ought by no means to reduce his stjde of living. 
If he make occasion, from the dulness of the times, to 
dismiss three of his six servants, is he not adding to 
the general distress by throwing three unemployed 
men upon the community, already staggering under 
the weight of its unemployed force ? If a woman who 
would ordinarily have four new suits for the winter 
content herself with two, is she not helping to with- 
draw from circulation money which would help to 
diminish friction? Women are proposing to make 
12* 



OUR CHARITIES. 139 

their own gowns, and do their own housework, not in 
the least because they are hampered by the hard 
times, not because they are not just as able to hire 
labor as they ever were, but because of the example. 
They say, conscientiously, that many persons will be 
obliged to curtail, and that it will be all the easier for 
these if they see others, possibly their superiors in 
social station, doing the same thing. This is friendly 
and kind; but is it not mistaken kindness? It is 
foregoing a positive for an imaginary service. Two 
women, let us sa} r , live side by side. One is rich : 
the other has a moderate fortune. The first is not 
seriously affected by the state of the money market ; 
that is, her income is less, but it is not sufficiently 
lessened to touch her style of living. The second 
woman finds herself obliged to cut off several expenses. 
She dismisses her seamstress and her second nurse. 
Now, if the first woman, to encourage and sustain 
her, does the same, we have two nurses and two 
seamstresses thrown upon the already overstocked 
labor market. One may be inevitable ; but the two are 
not. Most likely these two have others dependent 
upon them ; and so, for a mere sentimental and prob- 
lematical object, the circle of want and distress is 
enlarged. 

I think, moreover, that we overestimate influence. 
The thing which it is right and proper to do is gener- 



140 SERMONS TO TEE CLERGY. 

ally the thing which will have the best influence. It 
is pleasant to reflect that one is not singled out by 
fate for hard knocks. There is a certain satisfaction 
in feeling that your poverty is not the result of your 
own folly or error exclusively. But, however your 
drudgery over broom or needle may be softened by 
the thought that your bosom-friend is reduced to 
the same drudgery, there is very little mitigation in 
seeing your millionnaire friend pretending to be under 
a similar necessity. Grown people ought not to be so 
babyish ; and, if they are, it is much better to reason 
them out of it than to give in to it. The people who 
are to be first considered are not those to whom 
retrenchment means a little more or less feeling, 
pride, or work, but those to whom it means perplexity, 
struggle, despair. To spare the sensitiveness of one 
woman at the expense of another woman's dinner is 
a very unreasonable way of setting a good example. 
If circumstances enforce retrenchment, let people 
retrench "without fear, and with a manly heart." 
But let not those who are not obliged to do it diminish 
aught of their expenditure. Especially let them, in 
every possible way, purchase labor. No woman who 
can afford to buy should herself do a stitch of sewing 
or any household work. The cooking, the waiting, 
the sewing, which she hires, may be the very life of 
those to whom retrenchment means starvation. u It 



OUR CHARITIES. 141 

will not be disastrous to me," said the manager of a 
dressmaking establishment to a customer who was 
proposing to sew her own dresses. "I am sure of 
work enough for myself for the winter. But I employ 
twenty girls, not one of whom is independent, not one 
of whom but has some one or more to be helped by 
her earnings. As fast as sewing diminishes, I shall 
dismiss these girls ; but what is to become of them ? ' ' 
Others say that they must curtail in expenditure in 
order to have money to bestow in charity. This, too, 
is wise if it be wisely done. But can money be better 
bestowed in charity than in the purchase of labor? A 
great point is to arrange our charities so that they 
shall neither wound nor lower the self-respect of the 
recipients. There are manufacturers who are running 
their mills at a loss, because of the large suffering 
that would ensue from stoppage. This is not business : 
it is charity. The loss is so much money given to the 
poor. But it is given in the least offensive way. It 
is given in connection with a regular life, with stated 
work, with industrious habits, and, in many cases, to 
the recipient, wears the aspect of wages ; so that he is 
not demoralized thereby. Many a woman would not 
consider twenty, or fifty, or five hundred dollars an 
enormous sum to contribute for women and men who 
were starving in her neighborhood. Let her, then, 
distribute it, so far as possible, in the form of reward 



142 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

bestowed for service rendered, and thus prevent 
starvation and suffering, heal the feud between rich 
and poor, and avert social confusion and dismay. 

And what is applicable to the rich may also be 
applicable to those who are hovering on the border- 
land of wealth. Such a winter as is foretold might 
be doubly a " means of grace " to many women, — to 
those, for instance, who are a little doubtful as to 
whether it would be prudent to "keep help," or to 
add another servant to the household staff, but who 
would exceedingly enjoy and improve the leisure 
which such assistance would permit. Let charity give 
to them, and to some needy woman, the benefit of the 
doubt, and let the overburdened housewife rest from 
her labors, and refresh herself with social pleasures, 
with outdoor exercise, with family diversions, with 
reading and music, and all possible gratification of 
taste, and enlargement of culture, solacing herself 
continually with the added satisfaction of knowing, 
that, in ministering thus to her own joys, she is minis- 
tering also to the more imperative wants, and the 
greater need, of a poorer and more helpless woman. 

When Mr. Charles Kingsley wrote in the young 
lady's album, — 

" Be good, sweet child, and let who wiU be clever," 

it answered every purpose for poetry; but, in the 



OUR CHARITIES. 143 

conduct of life, it seems almost as necessary , to be 
clever as it is to be good. 

And poverty is not without its comical side, even in 
our serious, self-governing country. 

Any person who has travelled in Canada will have 
vivid recollections of the lively little beggars who 
swarm in all its streets and highways. Not only in 
the cities, but along the country roads, some dragon's 
cub's teeth seem to be springing up as merry alert 
children, ever on the qui vive for un sou. Wherever 
a penny is, there will the beggars gather together in 
numbers so perplexing, that jovl feel the sole safety is 
withdrawing into your shell, and relinquishing specie 
payment altogether. 

The only place in the United States where I have 
found any thing like this is Washington ; and there it 
is wholly unlike it. Independence, thank Heaven ! is 
the characteristic of our countrymen. The tow- 
headed, freckled-faced, bare-footed children of a New- 
England village would no sooner think of asking 
money from the passing traveller than would the 
president and his cabinet ; and, if you wish to give a 
cast-off garment to a soldier's widow, you must ap- 
proach her with as many moral salaams as if she were 
the cadi himself. Long and long and long may it be, 
or ever we shall lose our honorable pride in this re- 
gard ! 



144 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

But we have changed all that in Washington. 
Whether it be from some abnormal element in the social 
atmosphere, Washington seems to have more than its 
due share of the mendicancy of the country. It is true 
that you will occasionally find a mature beggar at some 
Northern street-crossing (I never did, though I have 
heard of them) ; but they are generally foreigners : 
and occasionally a demure boy, with a world too much 
pathos in his melancholy voice, will implore you to 
give him a few cents to buy a loaf of bread for his 
sick mother, or a pair of shoes to enable him to appear 
at the Sunday school ; (the precocious little hypocrite !) 
but these are sporadic cases, and hardly more than 
emphasize the general rule of American self-respect. 
It is in Washington alone that our native but else- 
where latent talent for direct beggary has found the 
conditions of development ; and the result is such as a 
patriotic American must ever view with feelings of 
pride. It may, at first sight, seem a rather extreme 
case of extracting sunshine from cucumbers ; but 
herein is genius. To be first in war, first in peace, 
and the rest, is easy enough ; but to be first in begging 
requires a rare combination of qualities : and nowhere 
does the ingenuity, the high spirit, the creative power, 
the fertility of resources characteristic of our country- 
men, show more clearly than in the manner in which 
they have lifted beggary out of the gutters of Wash- 



OUR CHARITIES. 145 

ington, and set it among the high and fine arts. 
Some in rags, and some in tags? Not a bit of it! 
The rags and tags, the bandaged arms and blinded 
eyes, the shipwrecked sailors, and all the hackneyed 
machinery of the professional beggar, are haughtily 
and completely abandoned. They may well enough 
serve the purposes of the effete despotisms of Europe ; 
but America plants herself on the rights of man. 
Rags for the peasant, tags for the serf, but, for the 
free American citizen, black coat and clean dickey 
forever ! And, if your American woman takes to beg- 
ging, be sure not one hair of her chignon shall fail, 
nor shall her overskirt miss a single puff, or the regu- 
lation ruffle be wanting from her walking-suit, with 
gloves and parasol to match. 

Your door-bell rings before breakfast ; and your ser- 
vant brings you the card of Rev. Dr. Adams. You 
are hardly in visiting-humor before breakfast ; but, if 
it is the gentle and scholarly pastor of Portsmouth, 
you would not for the world miss seeing him. And 
perhaps it may be Rev. Dr. Adams of Madison 
Square : who knows ? You give the last touch to your 
crimps, and a slight adjusting shake to your flounces, 
and go down with your best face. A single glance 
shows you that it is not the Portsmouth clergyman ; 
and, though there is a white cravat and a black coat, 
an indefinable something convinces you that it is not 
Dr. Adams of Madison Square. 



146 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

Dr. Adams rises to meet you, and bows with dignity. 
You return his bow with dubiety. 

" Mrs. Smith? " inquires the doctor blandly. 

You assent, stiffening slowly each instant. 

" I have called,' ' pursues the doctor, u in behalf of 
a brother-clergyman who has been obliged to retire 
from the pulpit on account of ill health, and who is 
thus left without resources. He is a very respectable 
man : I have known him for a long tine, and can vouch 
for his character. " 

"The River Rhine, as is well known, 
Washes the city of Cologne; 
But, oh, ye gods ! what power divine 
Can ever cleanse the River Rhine?" 

" He is in great need of help ; and any assistance 
you may be able to render him " — But here you take 
up the parable, like any heathen man and publican ; 
and Dr. Adams departs, unconsoled for his brother- 
clergyman. 

Mrs. Karl begs the favor of a few moments with 
Mrs. Smith. It is little to grant to a woman and a 
sister, and you go down. Mrs. Karl is a woman who 
has seen better days. She owned, in New York, a 
farm worth twelve thousand dollars. War, sickness, 
and misfortune came : they lost their property, farm 
and all. She is very desirous of getting it back. To 
do so, she proposes to set up a bakery. This bakery 
13 



OUR CHARITIES. 147 

once established, she is confident she can recover her 
farm in a year. The bakery building is already taken ; 
but as it was formerly a barrack, or hospital, or some- 
thing of the sort, her claim to it can be secured only 
b} T congressional action : of course, this involves 
delay. Meanwhile, could she borrow of you money 
enough to buy a load of coal ? She will pay you in 
baking, when her title-deed is secured, and her barrack 
made over into a bakery. She will send it to you in 
bread or cake, as you may desire. She has a very ac- 
complished daughter, and has no doubt of her success. 
You are less sanguine ; but is it not an heroic plan ? 
You give her five dollars. Three months pass, and the 
barrack still remains unmolested ; nor have you any 
proof of the spelling-book assertion, that 

" Bakers bake bread and cake." 

An English lady has called to see Mrs. Smith. The 
English lady is short and stout and ruddy, in a rusty 
black suit, with double rows of ruffles, with a spotted 
black veil parted here and there in the meshes. She 
brings herself to your recollection as a woman who 
has formerly applied to you for sewing. She then 
brought you a note of recommendation from the am- 
bassadress of her British Majesty, who had often 
employed her. The ambassadress has now left town, 
and can give her no more assistance. Her daughter is 



148 SEBMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

apprentice to a hairdresser. Her time will be out in 
two weeks ; and then she will begin to receive wages. 
Meanwhile, would you be willing to have the daughter 
come to your house every day to lunch, at precisely 
eleven o'clock ? She does not wish you to lay yourself 
out on the lunch : any thing will do. She is particular 
only that it shall be at precisely eleven o'clock. A 
very kind gentleman in one of the departments has 
hitherto given her her meals ; but he has now gone 
into the country : hence this requisition upon you. 

You compromise by giving her two dollars, assuring 
her that that will provide her daughter with lunch for 
a week. And, while I am writing these words, the 
Englishwoman has returned, after a month's absence, 
and asks for a little money, just to keep her over Sun- 
day. I cannot, for the life of me, see why she should 
want to be kept over Sunday more than any other day. 
If you are to starve on Monday, you may as well 
starve on Saturday, and be done with it. But my 
lady looks the farthest in the world from starving: 
even hunger can never have come unpleasantly near 
that ruddy face and rotund form. " Fee-faw-fum ! I 
smell the beer of an Englishman." I have even grave 
suspicions of gin. But what can you do ? The voice 
is tremulous. Compromise, always compromise. You 
do neither one thing nor another. Fifty cents is 
neither here nor there ; and then she asks you if you 



OUR CHARITIES. 149 

will not use your influence to get her a place in the 
treasury. If she could have a place in the treasury, 
it would yield enough to supply all her needs. As it 
is, all their m6ney goes to pay the rent. 

It is hardly hypocrisy to say you will mention it, as 
you would probably have far more difficulty in deceiv- 
ing her than she would have in deceiving you ; and, 
before the door has closed upon her retreating alpaca, 
a little girl trips up the steps, and informs you cheer- 
fully that the baby is very sick, and cannot live, and, 
"if it does die," ma has not money enough to buy a 
coffin. You invest ten cents in that hypothetical 
coffin, with an alacrity which does no honor to your 
heart, and which will be very far from appearing on 
the credit side when your account is made up. 

Mrs. Henderson calls before breakfast to see Gen. 
Smith. Gen. Smith, scenting the battle afar off, 
cowardly but piteously implores Mrs. Smith to go to 
the front. What exigency is too great for woman's 
devotion? Mrs. Smith goes — and is covered with con- 
fusion. Mrs. Henderson a beggar, with gay bonnet 
and spruce walking-suit? Not she! What is this? 
Two five-dollar bills held out to you! the genial 
McCulloch-face shining up at you from its home of 
dingy green as sweetly as if no war nor battle sound 
had ever been heard the world around. You put your 
hand to your head, almost like Mr. Twemlow, fearing a 

13* 



150 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

softening of the brain. But Mrs. Henderson explains 
that this is money which Gen. Smith was so good as to 
lend her some time ago. She has called to pay it be- 
fore ; but the general was out. She has tried again 
and again to find him at the Capitol, but failed. You 
take the money with unresisting, and even with un- 
thinking, innocence ; but she does not go. She lin- 
gers, hesitates, tells you they are still very poor. She 
has just received a letter from her sister in Virginia, to 
whom she had written, to know if it were worth while 
to come home. Her sister told her by no means to 
come ; that there was nothing for her to do, and their 
poverty was extreme. Her sister is a girl of education 
and accomplishments. She should like to read you 
the letter, that you may see in what condition they 
are : whereupon she unfolds the letter, and stands in 
the window to read it ; you, by the way, standing, all 
the while, to redeem what time you may. Father, it 
seems, has borrowed twenty-five dollars from Gousin 
Tom; and, " just think of it ! " comments Mrs. Hen- 
derson, "of the leetle, leetle money that poor girl has 
been able to earn, he has borrowed five dollars, and 
even of me five ! " and she resumes her letter with its 
tale of woe, till she comes to "we don't even have" — 
and there she stops short, saying, it just relates to the 
dishes on the table which they do without : she will 
not read that. Could the force of genius farther go ? 



OUR CHARITIES. 151 

She has too much delicacy to enter into those minute 
details, yet manages to convey to you the pith of the 
whole catalogue. You express your regret ; and the 
thought dawns upon you, that, perhaps, you ought not 
to keep the monej 7 . How can you take ten dollars from 
a table where they don't even have? — The more you 
think of it, the tighter you clutch the bills. Why 
should she read such a letter to you, a perfect stran- 
ger? Why did she bring the money, if not to pay the 
debt? Wretch that you are, thus to take the pound 
of flesh so scrupulously proffered ! But you do not let 
go the bills ; and you do let Mrs. Henderson go. You 
report proceedings to the money-lender. Oh, yes ! he 
remembers Mrs. Henderson. She came to him, repre- 
senting herself a Virginia woman, who had somehow 
got a place in the treasury. There she proclaimed her 
"secesh" views with a violence which lost her the 
situation ; but she appealed to Northern Kepublicans, 
in season and out of season, till she was restored. 
From the same gentlemen she had also borrowed 
various sums of money ; and to one of them, a sena- 
tor, she had afterwards gone, saying that she had a 
great desire to attend Mrs. Secretary's reception, and 
begged him to escort her. Unhappy Mrs. Henderson ! 
Ill-timed honesty ! Had Gen. Smith obeyed her sum- 
mons, she would doubtless have retained her little bills 
with the pleasant McCulloch face ; but a woman has 



152 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

no sentiment about a woman, and takes her dues as 
coldly as the frosty Caucasus. Let a woman pray 
Tennyson's prayer, "O God! for a man," if she de- 
signs to do any thing in the way of wool-pulling. 

Mrs. Forrest sits in the hall, patiently waiting oppor- 
tunity to see you. She is dressed in a perfectly plain 
mourning calico, and black, broad-brimmed straw hat, 
trimmed with a single ribbon. Her voice is low, her 
manner quiet, her words well chosen. She was the 
daughter of a Maryland farmer, and was reared with- 
out affluence, but in entire comfort. Her husband is 
an invalid, bed-ridden. She has five children. They 
have had absolutely nothing to eat since three o'clock 
the day before. They live out in the country, — a 
pleasant evening drive after dinner, but a weary, weary 
way for this poor woman to drag herself in on a sunny 
Washington morning. Yet again and again has she 
made the toilsome tramp in search of something to do. 
She is willing to sew, she will take service, she will 
work by the day, — any thing that will bring food for 
the helpless family. She has worked one day at Mrs. 
Evans's, assisting the ordinary household staff through 
an entertainment. For her day's work, she received 
fifty cents. 

" But you should have asked a dollar. That is the 
usual price for a day's worl£ of that sort." 

" I did ask it ; but they refused to pay it. They 



OUR CHARITIES. 153 

said fifty cents was all it is worth; and," she added 
quaintly, " the spunk has all gone out of me." 

Back and forth, from one department to another, 
had the poor woman sought employment. She had 
thought herself very near getting the washing of the 
towels at the post-office ; but it had been given to 
another person. She had just heard of a woman who 
had got a place in the treasury, and had been told 
that she might, perhaps, secure one, if she could get a 
letter of recommendation from some influential person. 
What could she do in the treasury? Any thing but 
write. She could be a messenger, a porter, — any 
thing that does not require education. You give her a 
little money (which, no doubt, perplexes her with the 
necessity of spending it twenty ways at once) and, 
perhaps, a very little hope, which is, after all, more 
than you feel yourself; for what is her waning 
strength among so many wants? 

Enter Mrs. Bainbridge, representative, in her own 
person, of the oldest and most aristocratic family in 
the Carolinas, and, in her husband's person, of the next 
best. Thus Mrs. Bainbridge. A gentleman told her 
that Gen. Smith used to be in the Carolinas, and rec- 
ommended her to come to him. Her husband died in 
the Union army, and she is entitled to a pension ; but 
she has never received it, and, in fact, does not know 
how to go to work to get it. She was well educated ; 



154 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

but her accomplishments have become rusty through 
disuse. She had, however, brushed up her music, and 
earned a little money by giving lessons. Her son ob- 
tained a place in the folding department, where he 
worked by the piece ; and, as he w r as very ambitious, 
had earned sometimes as much as thirty dollars a 
month. Indeed, she has kept him at it so close, that 
he scarcely knows how to read and write. " You 
would be surprised, Mrs. Smith, to know how little we 
can live on. Two sandwiches a day from the market 
is very often all we have." But her boy's arm, owing 
to the intensity of his toil, has become paralyzed ; 
and he is completely disabled. She has now the offer 
of a little school at Richmond, which she would take 
at once if she could but get money to pay her fare. 
She has been to the railroad authorities to beg them 
to take her free. They refused, but would take her at 
half-rate. That would be seven dollars and a half. 
She has pawned all her clothes, except what she wore. 
Mrs. Montgomery, who used to know her, had given 
her a fan and parasol, saying, " Mrs. Bainbridge, you 
are so reduced, that you must keep up your spirits 
and self-respect by being well dressed, or you will go 
down entirely." 

Very much shaken in mind, you ask her why she 
does not apply to the gentlemen from her own section, 
rather than to the representatives of the frozen North. 



OUR CHARITIES. 155 

She says they are Democrats, and would not do a single 
thing for her. There is Mr. Lang, a gentleman from 
her own town ; but it would be no use at all to go to 
him, because he is a Democrat. You think better of 
the Democrats than that, Red Republican though you 
be. You do not believe the man lives, North or 
South, who would refuse to help a suffering woman 
because of the political creed of her dead husband. 
But it is a pitiful case on the face of it. If it should 
be true ! You go scrambling around in your mind to 
catch an impartial view of the situation. She is a 
Randolph, let us say, by birth, and a Bainbridge by 
marriage. Why does she not appeal to the extant 
Randolphs and Bainbridges, if they belong to her, 
instead of exposing the family poverty? But you 
have heard that the Randolphs and Bainbridges have a 
large and impecunious family connection ; and this 
may be one defective link in the rusty chain. Why did 
the unnatural mother sacrifice her son's arm and edu- 
cation so ruthlessly ? A Yankee mother would sooner 
have lost her own life. And wiry did they send to 
market for sandwiches? It would have been cheaper 
to make their own bread. But, bless me ! if a woman 
is faint and hungry, there is an end of it. There is no 
use in arguing that it is her own fault. " The poor ye 
have always with you," so long as the fools are three 
out of four, in every person's acquaintance, according 



156 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

to Lady Mary. Yet, if she should be an impostor, 
and this merely a way of getting a living ! You re- 
member that your friend and neighbor kept the tally 
of all the beggars for a month, taking the name and 
address of every one, and sending her son, or a trusty 
servant, to investigate each case. Of thirty appli- 
cants, only one proved to be honest. The god of this 
world whispers over your left shoulder, and you give 
five dollars, telling the distressed relic of the first and 
second families that no doubt the railroad company 
will carry her for five dollars. All clay you are 
haunted, at intervals, by an uncomfortable feeling that 
you may have been a grudging steward of the Lord's 
estate ; held in suspense by an almost equally uncom- 
fortable suspicion, that you will be laughed at by the 
lord of the earthly manor for having again been duped 
by a g av deceiver. So far as peace of mind is 
secured, your five dollars is as poor a venture as was 
the bow which Silas Wegg invested in Mr. Boffin. 

Mrs. Nott's card comes up to you perfectly comme il 
faut. Long experience has made you suspicious of 
strange names ; but this may be a visitor proper. You 
descend to find Mrs. Nott a quiet, ladylike-looking 
person, as non-committal as her card. To beg, or not 
to beg, is a question which must be left to answer 
itself. 

" Have I the pleasure of knowing you, Mrs. Nott?" 



OUR CHARITIES. 157 

" I have never seen }'ou before, madam ; but I have 
called in behalf of a lady of my acquaintance who is 
very needy, and wants assistance." 

" What is the name of the lady? " 

"Oh! you would not ask me to give her name, if 
you knew her : it would hurt her feelings so much ! " 

" Surely you cannot expect me to give blindfold." 

1 ' Oh ! I do not expect a great deal from any one 
place ; but twenty-five cents here, and fifty cents there, 
make a great deal in course of the day." 

" Do you find it agreeable to go about from house to 
house asking alms ? ' ' 

" On the contrary, it is the most disagreeable work 
I ever did. I do not mind being refused ; but some 
of the ladies refuse so harshly ! If they would only 
refuse me kindly, I would not feel so badly." 

You mentally thank the Jew for teaching you that 
word, and refuse her with the very honey and cream 
of kindness. 

You are sitting, like Father Abraham, in your tent- 
door, anglice bay-window, in the cool of the day, 
listening to the wandering minstrels. No beggars 
they, no vulgar organ-grinders, with grinning monkey, 
hardly less hideous than themselves, but an Italian 
troupe, olive-skinned, dark-eyed, pleasant-voiced, 
decently-dressed, — a young man with a harp, a younger 
man and young girl with violins, who play " Norma " 

14 



158 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

and bid you good-evening; or go quickly away 
without playing at all, if you do not appear at 
the window at the touch of the first few notes. 
They are not mendicants, but ministers to your 
pleasure, harbingers of the millennium, honest earners 
of honest money. The mendicants are the two 
able-bodied youug men coming up the door-steps, 
who, seeing you convenient, tell their moving tale 
without further parley. The thunderbolts of fate have 
smitten them sore. One has lost his wife, and one his 
betrothed, — " his only friend, to whom he was to have 
been married." Sisters and brothers followed in 
rapid succession. " Give me some money for them," 
says the general. 

" I won't," says the colonel in flat insubordination. 

" Fifty cents? " pleads the general. " Haven't you 
any heart?" 

u I haven't fifty cents in it." 

" A quarter, then. Lend me a quarter." 

" I won't : you will never pay it." 

And the hapless afflicted, seeing the case going 
against them, proceed ruthlessly to slay father and 
mother, till they stand alone in the world, a pair of 
helpless orphans. 

"There!" says the general, " now they've killed 
them all off. Give them ten cents, colonel, and let 
them go. Don't be stingy." 



OUR CHARITIES. 159 

" No," says the colonel. "Now I won't give them 
any thing," as if he had meant to settle a handsome 
pension on each ; and the bereaved young men 
march away, unfriended, melancholy, slow. 

A buxom Irishwoman sends up an earnest appeal 
from the kitchen for permission to see you a few 
minutes. She has been unable to keep the wolf from 
the door, except by pawning her clothes. She shows 
you the pawn-tickets. She has two dresses and a 
shawl which she is exceedingly desirous to redeem from 
the gentlemen of the three balls ; and she solicits you 
to advance — mind, I say, to advance, not to bestow, 
— eight dollars for the purpose. Eemuneration is to 
come to you in the shape of spring chickens for your 
table, if Providence smiles upon her poultry-yard. 
Your servants know nothing about the woman. No 
one knows any thing about her ; but the general, who 
hears of her story, thinks it is better to be on the safe 
side, and give her the eight dollars. Observe the 
superior sagacity of the superior sex. Women give 
hesitatingly, fearing imposture on the one side, and 
ridicule on the other. Man, the tyrant, having nobody 
to fear, gives with a high hand, assumes imposture in 
the first place, bestows his alms in spite of it, and 
defies fate. A young man accosts the general at the 
Capitol, tells him he is from his own State and city, 
and gives his name. He has been on duty at Fortress 



160 SERMONS TO TEE CLERGY. 

Monroe ; has received news that his mother in Ohio is 
very ill ; and has obtained leave to visit her. Coming 
up the Potomac on a steamer, his money is stolen ; and 
he finds himself in Washington, penniless, unable to go 
forward or backward. Thus appealed to, what can the 
general do, but lend him thirty dollars for his sick 
mother's sake, " hoping for nothing again," — a hope, 
it is needless to add, which does not fail of fruition. 

To the same general comes another young man, 
representing himself to be the brother of a friend of 
his in New York. He, too, in Washington, has fallen 
among thieves at the hotel, who have stripped him of 
his money, and reduced him to the necessity of beg- 
ging for a loan of twenty dollars, for a week at the 
longest. And the general looks him in the eye, and 
knows he shall never see his twenty dollars again, and 
gives it to him ; and is careful to buy his own horse- 
car-tickets by the package, to save a cent or two a 
year. So complicate, so wonderful, is man ! 

But one of these adventurous young knights was 
foiled, though "more by hit than any good wit." A 
gentleman, a member of congress, served on a com- 
mittee, several years ago, with another gentleman, 
who used frequently to refer certain questions to him, 
saying, half jocularly, that he was the only business- 
man in the house. Not long ago, a young gentleman, of 
pleasing person and address, called upon him, stating 



OUR CHARITIES. 161 

that he was the son of his former congressional friend ; 
that he was returning from a trip to the White Moun- 
tains, in company with his two sisters ; that on the 
road his purse had been stolen, and that they were now 
at their hotel in a very embarrassing position. He 
knew no one in the city to whom he could apply ; but he 
remembered this gentleman's name as that of a friend 
of his father's, of whom he had often heard his father 
speak as the only business-man in the house. He 
had, therefore, ventured to call upon him, and begged 
to know if he would furnish him with a hundred 
dollars, on receipt of a telegram from his father saying 
that it was all right. The gentleman, very much pre- 
possessed in the young man's favor by the combined 
frankness and dignity of his demeanor, and perfectly 
recollecting the phrase which his father had been in the 
habit of using, hastened to assure him of his readiness 
to assist him in every way ; and was about to add that 
he would give him the money on the spot without 
waiting for the telegram, but thought better of it, and 
asked him, instead, whether he was at all familiar with 
the city. The young man replied that he was not, 
never having been in it till that morning. 

44 Then," said the gentleman, 44 as my carriage is 
coming immediately, I will telegraph to your father 
myself, and save you the trouble ; and the money shall 
be ready for you when you call." 

14* 



162 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

The young man thanked him, and took courteous 
leave. The telegraph brought, from the gentleman 
appealed to, the repty, that he had no grown-up son ; 
that all his children were small, and all were at home 
with him. 

The young gentleman never returned for his hundred 
dollars. 

There is another class, a sort of cross between 
beggars and work-people, — women who ask to do 
washing for you, and, when they have spoiled your 
laces and muslins, will take no pay for it ; but if you 
will get their boy a place in the department ! — merry, 
hearty women, who will accept any thing, and inveigle 
for more before your very eyes. 

" You know that coat you gave me/' says one of 
these jolly beggars. " I ripped the tails off, and made 
a jacket for my man. People say, ' Where did you 
get this nice coat ; ' and I say, ; Why, the Hon. Judge 
Smith gave it to me.' (The Hon. Judge Smith never 
having been inside a court-room in his life.) ' Look 
at this cloth,' I say to 'em. 'See how fine it is! 
You wouldn't catch the Hon. Judge Smith wearing 
any thing but fine cloth.' " 

To such adroit compliments can you refuse an old 
waistcoat, even if the Hon. Judge Smith must wear 
his coat close buttoned to the chin in consequence ? 

Sometimes the} 7 sue for sewing. They always come 



OUR CHARITIES. 163 

with verbal recommendations from Mrs. Admiral This, 
or Mrs. Secretary That, or Mrs. Minister Tother. The 
plain Mrs. Jones, Brown, and Robinson receive scant 
courtesy from these dames of the needle. In an 
experimental, or a quixotic, or a philanthropic mood, 
you suddenly take one of them at her word, and intro- 
duce her to your happy home. She has just been two 
months at Mrs. Senator Irving' s, can cut and make 
all sorts of children's clothes, can run a machine, and 
will rent one for you at five dollars a month, and just 
finish 3 7 our whole season's sewing at one smart swoop. 
Her buoyancy and confidence are contagious ; and you 
meditate a general clearance of the sewing-room. 
Alas ! the very first overskirt gives signs of woe. The 
waist is a total wreck. Puffs swell awry ; gaps yawn 
tremendous ; seams close untimely. Material for two 
is swallowed up by one, and that a failure. Still she 
cuts and sews, and sews and cuts, like one possessed 
with an evil spirit. The sewing-machine becomes a 
hungry monster, gobbling up dry-goods with insatiate 
maw. Your one object is to get this Witch of Endor 
out of the house before you are quite stripped of your 
possessions. At the end of three days, by force of 
hard money and soft words, Sindbad frees himself from 
his old man ; and you stand in your sewing-room, 
which looks as if a whirlwind had swept through it, 
feeling that you would gladly pay the money over 



164 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

again, if you could but be put back to the place whence 
you started, yet thankful that any thing has escaped 
from the general wreck. 

Next day there comes in a bill of fifty-five dollars 
for a sewing-machine. 

Separate from all these is another class, — the real 
poor, the poverty-stricken, maimed, halt, and blind, 
deformed children, squalid children, ragged beyond 
the verge of decency, dirty, famished, pitiable, — 
" creation's blot, creation's blank." You cannot help 
them. You can only give to them as they come, from 
day to day, tiding them over from one wretched hour 
to another. Whence they come, or whither they go, 
you cannot divine. Must they not burrow in the 
ground like moles? Out of their ranks, I fancy, come 
the newsboys, who seem to be a more miserable, filthy, 
and forlorn set of boys than are ever seen elsewhere. 
Their pinched old faces, apparently, lack the humor 
that enlivens the Northern newsboys ; and any thing 
more hideous is seldom heard than the laugh which 
accompanies the Washington newsboys' proffer of a 
paper. 

Ingenuity, hypocrisy, deception, one does not look 
for in these unhappy creatures ; yet I would fain hope 
they are less unhappy than they seem. Painful to the 
eye, hopeless to the heart, they, and such as they, are 
the insoluble problem of the world. Making every 



OUR CHARITIES. 165 

possible allowance for that power of becoming used to 
things, which, according to Plato, is a gift of the gods, 
and which needs must soften their hard lot, rendering 
less sharply bitter what nothing can make sweet, it 
still remains, that unconsciousness of evil is the last, 
worst result of evil. And, for a life so harsh, nothing 
can atone, — nothing in this world ; but, in some of 
the pleasant stars that go shining through the sky, 
may not the Father of all have prepared a clean and 
wholesome place for these neglected little ones? — 
some pure and perfect world, where light and love 
may find them ; where all the defilement of earth shall 
be cleansed from them, and all the abasement of earth 
shall vanish away; where, in the ministrations of 
unwearying care, and the unfolding of repressed ten- 
dencies, all memory of degradation shall fade into a 
dim far-off dream, whose only power shall be to lend 
an ever-keener joy to the happiness of their ever- 
brightening home ? 

But I do not set the Rev. Dr. Adams on that star ; 
at least, not yet. Late may he return to those skies, 
and never until he has cast off his black coat, and torn 
off his white choker, and turned into a retired clergy- 
man, whose sands of life shall henceforth run out 
honestly. For him no shining star, but a lonely 
journey on the melancholy moon, and on its dark side 
too ; for all home, a crag in that worn-out world, a 



166 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

sharp coal-peak on that burnt-up cinder, companioned 
only by the ghosts of dead generations, where he may 
bemoan himself for the brother-clergyman, who lived 
only in his own wicked heart ; since, doubtless, nothing 
short of the moon will bring this obdurate and deco- 
rous sinner to repentance. 



KELIGIOUS BEGGAKY. 




RELIGIOUS BEGGARY. 

I HERE is no such thing as religious beggary. 
All beggary is irreligious. A "converted 
Jew" walks through the country village, 
asking the hard-working farmers to help him prosecute 
his studies, preparatory to going back to Jerusalem, 
and converting his brethren. He presents on a paper 
the names of several neighboring clergymen, by way 
of indorsement, some one of whom has also given him 
a list of the persons upon whom it will be worth his 
while to call. I survey him, — an able-b.odied young 
man, lounging across the country in a decent coat, 
daring to ask alms of men who toil from sunrise to 
sunset in shirt- sleeves, — a strong man, with muscles 
in his arms, daring to ask bounty of women ; and I 
think the Jews might as well stay unconverted. A self- 
supporting Jew is better than a beggarly Christian. 
Why will clergymen countenance such riff-raff? Why 
will they bring conversion into contempt by making it 
a vagabond's profession? What is it that causes 
clerical and ecclesiastical mendicancy to be honorable, 

15 169 



170 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

while social and secular mendicancy is disgraceful? 
Can beggary be baptized into the name of Christ? 
Does the abnegation of self mean the abnegation of 
self-respect ? 

A little while ago, while walking home from church 
on Sunday, we were assailed by a decently dressed 
beggar-boy, asking money to send the gospel to the 
heathen. One might have supposed it was an ingen- 
ious species of fraud, adapted to church-goers : but 
the boy declared that he was no impostor, that his 
Sunday-school teacher had just given him his commis- 
sion ; and he produced a paper, showing that he had 
actually been sent out into the street as a common 
beggar, on the sabbath-day, with some trumped-up 
story about the heathen. This country, not long ago, 
entertained a company of heathen for several weeks ; 
and it is safe to hazard the assertion that not one of 
them was guilty of a misdemeanor surpassing this. 
Such Sunday-school teachers are corrupters of the 
young: such Sunday-schools are nurseries of vice. 
They tend to all manner of craft and cunning. Let 
Sunday-school teachers go and stand themselves, hat 
in hand, at the corners of the streets, if they like ; let 
them bandage their arms, or blind their eyes, and 
adopt a dog and a string as additional persuasives to 
early piety ; or perhaps a hand-organ and a monkey 
might bring more money into the treasury of the Lord 



RELIGIOUS BEGGARY. 171 

from the pockets of church-goers : but let them do 
this beggar's work themselves, and not tamper with 
the children. The worst count in the indictment 
against Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, was, not that he 
sinned himself, but that he made Israel to sin. Ec- 
clesiastical Fagins may even pick pockets with what 
dexterity the service of the sanctuary seems to them 
to require ; but we do not care to have even our 
work* us bo}^s turned into Artful Dodgers. 

Speaking of pickpockets, once there was a church 
that wanted a new bell. If a cotton-factory were in a 
similar predicament, it would take its own money, and 
buy a bell, or go without. But we change all that 
when we experience a " change of heart." Accord- 
ingly, this church took the more excellent and ecclesi- 
astical way, of going around with a subscription-paper 
among the " outs " and the u ins, ,, Christian or infidel 
(all is fish in which can be found a piece of money) ; 
and, having mulcted the community in a goodty sum, 
this enterprising church changed its mind, broke out 
into a local honesty, appropriated the money to pay 
its debts, and, after a while, started on another tour of 
bell-wringing. 

" Half -pence and farthings 
Say the bells of St. Martin's," 

calling to the worship of Mammon. 



172 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

" Leave is light," thought another church which 
applied to Demetrius, the silversmith, for his aid in 
replacing their old communion-service with a new one, 
although Demetrius confessed another creed. Deme- 
trius being a generous man, with the instincts of a 
gentleman, and as yet unhardened by ecclesiastical 
practices, asked how much money was required, and, 
to prevent the necessity of further begging, offered to 
furnish a new service, and pay all the cost, beyond 
what the proposed sale of the old one should bring, 
out of his own pocket. In due time the work was 
done, at an outlay considerably larger than the origi- 
nal estimate ; and the gift was received by the church 
with the grateful and pleasant suggestion, that, if 
Demetrius chose to bear the whole cost, the money 
arising from the sale of the former plate should be 
devoted to replenishing the Sunday-school library. In 
the world, this would be called greed and grossness ; 
but, in the Church, it is only that " the zeal of thine 
house hath eaten me up," — hath, at least, eaten out of 
me the unregenerate virtues of delicacy, modesty, and 
propriety, the sense of Christian and even of Pagan 
courtesy, and made me, instead of a self-respecting, 
high-minded Christian gentleman, a bold and shameless 
beggar. 

Motive does not affect such deeds. Bad manners in 
the world do not become good manners by ''joining 



RELIGIOUS BEGGARY. 173 

the church." Brass in the street is not gold in the 
pews. The whine of a beggar is not music, because 
played on a Jew's-harp. You might just as well ask 
your neighbors to put a t piazza on your dwelling, as 
neighboring churches to put a bell on your meeting- 
house. I have my own heathen constituency : it is an 
impertinence to ask me to look after yours. We 
inveigh, justly enough, against political corruption. 
We do not believe that all the money which is raised 
for elections goes to circulate documents, or transport 
voters, but that many a stream deviates into dishon- 
est pockets. The raising and the managing of church 
funds may not be open to the same objections ; but, 
considering the higher plane of Church than State, 
they are equally unsatisfactory. We have departed as 
far from piety as politics from honesty ; and it is not 
unquestionable that we have always saved honesty 
intact. " Let not thy left hand know what thy right 
hand doeth," says Christ ; and we send a subscription- 
paper around the pari*sh, with every man's gift against 
his name ; the big figures at the top, to be seen of all, 
the little ones following suit in a pell-mell of publicity. 
" Whosoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it, an 
offering of the Lord/' was the divine way of building 
churches. And " they came, every one whose heart 
stirred him up, and every one whom his spirit made 
willing." We do not trust a man's heart to stir him 

15* 



174 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

up, nor his spirit to make him willing. If there is a 
church to be built or rebuilt, or a debt to be paid, 
we engineer it, from the first stage of reluctance to 
the last announcement of success. We have private 
conferences, and well-selected committees, and public 
meetings, minutely prepared for well-manufactured, 
spontaneous enthusiasm. It is edifying to read in the 
religious newspapers, that the Church of Sardis has, by 
a freewill and united offering, removed the heavy debt 
under which it had been suffering since the erection of 
its new house ; so many members coming forward with 
five thousand dollars, so many with three thousand, so 
many with one thousand, cheering the heart of their 
pastor, and reviving the faith of the saints. But it is 
not edifying always to hear the remarks the saints 
make at home, touching the manipulations and manoeu- 
vres by which they have been forced to volunteer. If 
the freewill offering of the Israelites were like many 
of ours, Bezaleel, the son of Uri, and Aholiab, the 
son of Ahisamach, must have heard some pretty plain 
talk. 

In the Protestant Church we have abolished priest- 
hood ; but mendicancy, prevented from concentrating 
itself in a single order, has become diffused through 
all orders. It is not strange that the lay mind becomes 
confused when clerical views are vague. " If golde 
ruste, what shulde iren do?" The laborer, whether 



RELIGIOUS BEGGARY. 175 

clergyman or farmer, is worthy of his hire ; but the 
clergyman and the farmer stand on entirely different 
grounds. The farmer sells a bushel of potatoes, a ton 
of hay, and receives the price agreed on ; and that is 
the end of the matter. The clergyman receives his 
stipulated one, two, five, thousand dollars a year, but 
is never let alone. Somebody, generally a woman, is 
evermore perambulating the parish, gathering dimes 
and dollars to buy the minister's wife a set of furs, or 
himself a silk gown, or a carpet for their parlor, or, in 
a general waj^, to make them a present, or get up a 
surprise-donation-party, till ministers have lost some- 
what of manhood. Something sturdy, self-reliant, 
independent, upright, and downright, has gone out of 
the profession. Ministers will permit, will even invite, 
what other men would resent. The merchant in a city, 
the shoemaker in a country village, would feel dis- 
graced by a contribution-paper going about town to 
collect money to buy himself a coat. The lawyer's 
wife would rather wear calico all her life than levy 
tribute on the parish for a silk. But the minister and 
the minister's wife will wear the contributed clothes, 
and make a note of it for the religious newspaper. The 
school-teacher surveys his district, builds or buys such 
a house as he can, and, if not able to do either, rents 
a tenement, or boards, and betters himself as soon as 
possible. Ministers are willing to be accounted a 



176 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

feeble folk, for whom houses should be provided, with- 
out responsibility of their own ; and this unmanly 
self-surrender loses its sting by christening the house a 
parsonage. The carpenter who wants to take his wife 
on a summer-trip to the "White Mountains waits till 
he has earned enough to do so at his own expense ; 
but some rich deacon, or " active brother," is expected 
to take the minister, and pay the bills. And the min- 
ister not only suffers these things, but takes pleasure 
in them that do them, and sometimes feel aggrieved if 
they are not done ; and sends a note to the religious 
newspapers, suggesting or affirming that they should be 
done. A minister of aesthetic tendencies has his 
rooms frescoed by a painter who has recently joined 
his congregation. After waiting a reasonable time, 
the painter sends in his bill. The clergyman returns 
an injured-innocence sort of note, saying that he had 
not expected to be called upon to pay; but he will 
settle the bill as soon as he can, though not immedi- 
ately, as he shall have to save the money out of his 
salary. The painter, being a gentleman, immediately 
sends him a receipted bill ; and the minister, being a 
— minister, accepts it. But upon what ground should 
he expect to be frescoed for nothing? Why is it a 
grievance for a minister to pay his bills out of his 
salary? What else is his salary for? The blacksmith 
never asks his neighbor the mason to give him money 



RELIGIOUS BEGGARY. Ill 

to buy his wife trinkets, or to treat him to a pleasure- 
excursion. Why is it better manners for the minister? 
The little boy is taught that it is very impolite to go to 
a companion's house, and ask, or even hint, for plum- 
cake. Why is it polite for his father to ask in the 
religious newspaper, or hint in any way, that his com- 
panion should join hand in hand to give him the plum- 
cake that his soul longs for? But the religious 
newspapers blossom with hints and downright exhorta- 
tions to parishes to make presents to their ministers, 
to take them on journeys, to pay their expenses to 
national councils. There is often a certain space 
devoted to a record of the presents thus made ; for 
indelicacy has come to such a pass, that donors do 
not sometimes neglect to stipulate with the donee, 
that their donations shall be given the publicity of 
print; and, on the side of the clergy, the argu- 
ment is unblushingly used, that the facts are bruited 
for the sake of stirring up other parishes to make 
similar presents to their pastors. The resources of 
ingenuity are exhausted in devising pleasant and 
playful metaphors to describe the presentation ; and 
sometimes the statement is as formal and crisp as an 
advertisement. Donation-parties are occasionally 
made the object of a little gentle satire ; but it is not 
because they are donation-parties, but because the 
donations are not big enough. "According to the 



178 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

ecclesiastical almanac," says a religious paper, " now 
is the time for ministers to ' look out for donation- 
parties ; ' which, in the words of one of their number, 
' are cheerful gatherings, when a clergyman's flock 
overwhelm him with bead watch-pockets, and eat up 
about one hundred and twelve dollars' worth of his 
winter provisions.' " 

Here is a good text for the religious journal. An 
excellent sermon could be preached upon donation- 
parties in general, — the evils from which they spring, 
the evils which they engender, and the propriety of 
their discontinuance. But the religious journal only 
draws the very mild moral, "Nevertheless, a good 
donation-part}' is a good thing. Try it, flocks, and let 
the ministers see." It is not that flocks break into 
the parsonage with their cumbrous fleece : it is that 
they only rub up against it, leaving bits of straj- wool. 
If they would shear close enough, there would be no 
fault found. Indeed, the amount of fleece left is get- 
ting to be the measure of grace received. I read in a 
missionary report, that u Our associates, Mr. and Mrs. 
S., are meeting with great success among the natives 
of N. During the seven weeks we were absent, they 
received more presents from our people than I had for 
eight years. And Mr. S. had made such progress in 
the language, that he occupied the pulpit three sab- 
baths, discoursing in the native language. This is a 



RELIGIOUS BEGGARY. 179 

most hopeful beginning for the missionary work." 
Most hopeful indeed. " Rev. A. B. C. and wife," we 
are told, " were favored with a very pleasant visit and 
valuable gifts from his people, on the tenth anniversary 
of his marriage. Great harmony prevails ; and a 
gracious outpouring of the Spirit has been enjoyed." 

Grace and greenbacks are the two horns of the 
altar. A tc precious revival," and " a purse of money 
and other gifts, amounting in value to seventy-five 
dollars," enjoy the honors of the same paragraph. A 
gifted 3^oung brother preaches to the heathen in their 
own tongue, and draws more money out of their 
pockets in seven weeks than his less eloquent prede- 
cessor had done in eight years. The power of the 
gospel is seen in a whole parish's coming together in 
the vestry to present the minister's wife with a 
thimble, and the minister himself with a gold-headed 
cane — as if the kingdom of heaven were to be taken 
by violence. The number of young converts gathered 
into the church, and the market- value of the beef and 
cheese contributed by the old converts, are reported 
with equal precision ; and it is counted for distinguished 
disinterestedness, if the minister looks around upon 
the dried apples and salt pork left by the receding 
donation- tide, and exclaims, with tears in his eyes, 
" Not yours, but you ! " 

" Let every church," says the religious newspaper, 



180 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY, 

" whether rich or poor, contribute, of such as they 
have, to form a fund to enable their pastor to take such 
journej^s as are expedient. By his attendance on the 
associations, conferences, and conventions, — meetings 
so closely allied to the best interests of the Church, — 
he will be so stimulated and refreshed, that the enrich- 
ing which his people have- bestowed on him will be 
returned to them fourfold. This fund may be called 
' The People's Relief-Fund,' or ' The Minister's Travel- 
ling-Fund.' Let the people try this ; and, certain it is, 
that they will be relieved of a dull minister." 

They will be relieved of him while he is gone to his 
county conference ; but they will be surprised to find 
how short the time seems before he is back on their 
hands again. To hire a dull minister, and then hire 
him to go away, is burning your candle at both ends. 
Would it not be cheaper to hire a bright one in the 
beginning ? The notion that a dull minister is to be 
sharpened up by conferences and conventions is pre- 
posterous. They are far more likely to fritter away 
an able man's power. Doubtless, for certain purposes 
and to a certain extent, conference is useful ; but the 
multiplication, in our day, of associations and con- 
sociations, of convention and council, is any thing but 
conducive to intellectual or moral vigor. No doubt 
suggestions are sometimes made, and thoughts eluci- 
dated ; but we are oftener reminded of Mr. Weller and 



RELIGIOUS BEGGARY. 181 

the alphabet, and ask, " Is it worthwhile to go through 
so much to get so little? " Any thing like a mental 
shock is studiously avoided. The questions which are 
really questions are left outside, or represented only 
by persons of our own faith ; and what is admitted is 
that which is, in the main, universally assumed. Our 
National Council in Boston may have been greatly 
productive of good fellowship and good feeling, and, 
so far, a good thing ; but as an exponent of religious 
belief, as a simplifier of theological creed, as an organ- 
ism of faith or polity, did not the mountain bring forth 
a mouse ? The great object of the council seemed to be 
to keep hands off. The great aim was, how not to do 
it. But why come up from the ends of the earth to 
declare our adherence to the articles which our fathers 
set forth or re-affirmed? That goes without saying. 
Life and thought have changed since the days of our 
fathers ; and, if we want to know any thing, it is how 
we stand affected by this change. To say that we are 
not affected at all is to say that we have a name to 
live, and are dead. 

The chances are, that the association, the conference, 
the convention, will travel around in the same orbit, 
and on the same plane, as the dull minister. He will 
be stimulated and refreshed to pursue, upon his return, 
the precise path which has already led him to failure. 
If the People's Relief-Fund would send him to a politi- 
16 



182 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

cal caucus, to the gaming-tables of Hamburg, to the 
Derby Races, to the Louisiana legislature, to a travel- 
ling circus, to a French assembly, or a London dinner- 
table, — to places where men are in deadly, if wicked 
earnest, or places where he will be dashed out of 
his grooves, and into new contacts and courses, — the 
People's Fund might, indeed, afford relief. 

But, apart from the wisdom of any mode of apply- 
ing a relief-fund, why should the suggestion of a 
relief-fund be made? Why should the farmers and 
the shoemakers and the day-laborers of a poor church 
take their hard-earned money, and give it to their 
pastor, to send him anywhere? They have already 
paid him his salary. Why must they give him gifts ? 
They need their surplus earnings as much as he. 
Their lives are more limited than his. Their wives 
stay at home from year's end to year's end. If they 
have any money to spare, let them take their own 
little trip, and enlarge their views to broader horizons. 
If the rich merchant choose to give money to his 
minister, and his minister choose to take money as a 
gift, it is their own affair. But for an educated man 
to take the money of uneducated men and hard-working 
women, and spend it in pleasure and recreation ; for 
religious newspapers to urge or to hint that the hard- 
working men and women should thus devote their 
money, and praise them without stint when they do 



RELIGIOUS BEGGARY, 183 

thus devote it, — seems not high-minded, seems mean 
and mercenary. 

A parsonage is a good thing in many respects. 
Very few ministers, perhaps, are able to buy or to build 
houses ; and it is desirable that they should have a fixed 
home. If parishes should feel that the parsonage was 
as much a part of their responsibility as the church, 
that they could no more expect a minister without the 
one than without the other, I should not object. We 
should all be better, if ministers were so able that they 
could dictate their own terms. Whatever the parish 
in its own interest, from a business-point of sight, 
chooses to proffer, it need not be unmanly for a min- 
ister to accept. But is it manly for him to ask people 
to provide him a house? Is it even proper or neces- 
sary? As ministers come and go, there are very few 
parishes where they cannot hire a house for as long a 
period as they are likely to stay. Why should one 
man in a town be freed from the need of care and 
thought by the care and thought of other men ? Is it 
that he may be the more free to pursue his spiritual 
calling? Come, then, the celibate clergy of the 
Eoman Catholic Church! Let us have either one 
thing or another, — either a celibate priesthood, with- 
out entangling alliances, wholly devoted and subject 
to the Church ; or a man taking care of himself and 
his wife and children, precisely like other men. 



184 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

A woman spends her prime in teaching the children 
of her native town at a third, or a half, or a quarter, 
what the minister receives ; and boards in her father's 
house, or wherever she can find shelter. No one ever 
thinks of building her a house, or giving her a quit- 
claim deed on a single apartment in anybody's house. 
The person who teaches your children six hours a day 
for five days in the week has, apparently, a greater 
influence on the next generation than he who preaches 
to grown-up people two hours a day once a week. 
That person needs, just as much, freedom from material 
care ; and, if a woman, she has immeasurably less 
chance for securing such exemption. But the^women 
of a parish, who never think of providing a domicile 
for their townswoman, will meet at each other's houses 
to knit toes and heels to coarse woollen stockings, 
at seventy-five cents a dozen pairs, to provide a 
house for an able-bodied man. I should not think 
a man would like to live in such a house. It cannot 
be a pleasant thing for a man to look around upon his 
wainscots and windows, and reflect that a dozen or 
twenty women, by "working smartly," finished a 
dozen pairs of stockings in three evenings, and, with 
the seventy-five cents therefor received, built up pain- 
fully the roof that shelters him. It is a reform against 
nature. If ministers will not let women preach, 
neither should they let them build. If they do not 



RELIGIOUS BEGGARY. 185 

want women to become men, they should play the man 
themselves. It is certainly no more unwomanly to 
occupy a man's pulpit than to rear a man's house. 
But a woman in the pulpit sets a whole presbytery to 
cackling ; while a woman may build a Presbyterian 
parsonage from turret to foundation-stone, and not a 
clergyman of them all will move the wing, or open 
the mouth, or peep. 

"Who says that we have no ' plain speaking ' in 
the pulpit, these days," asks a religious newspaper, 
" when the Massachusetts preacher can be named 
who uttered the following in a recent sermon? — 

" 4 Some of the ladies of the Church may say, 

that, if they lived in Christ's time, he should have made 
their house his home, nor suffered for the lack of any 
hospitality they could furnish. But I think he would 
have gone homeless for all you would have done for 
him. And here is why I think so : you allowed me to 
pay the hotel-bills of every minister who supplied the 
pulpit while I was in a few months ago.' " 

If a teacher hire a substitute during his absence, 
does he expect the committee to pay that substitute's 
hotel-bills ? If a treasury clerk put his brother in his 
place during his extra furlough, does he expect the 
government to pay his brother's board? Why should 
the church pay the hotel-bills of the substitute any 
more than the butcher's bills of the regular preacher ? 

16* 



186 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

At the outset, the church agrees to pay so much salary. 
It is no more incumbent upon the church to entertain 
the preacher's guests, be they substitutes or exchanges, 
than it is incumbent on the minister- to entertain the 
deacon's son-in-law, or the merchant's aunts and 
cousins. Yet this preacher has the profaneness, the 
vulgarity, the assumption, to say, that, because his 
church did not pay the hotel-bills of his hired man, 
they would have rejected Christ. The religious news- 
paper calls this " plain speaking : " I call it brutality. 
The minister who can so defile his pulpit as to use it 
for such purposes is not fit to be admitted to any 
lady's house. 

Again : the same paper says it hears of a " minister, 
who lately astounded his congregation by reading c out 
in meeting ' an account of his receipts and expenses for 
the year. The only item to the credit of the richest 
member of his flock was c one apple-pie.' " 

This seems but a smart joke to the reverend re- 
corder ; and, no doubt the reverend reader thought he 
had scored one against his congregation : but it is such 
things as these that lower the clergy in public estima- 
tion, and inspire the laity with disgust. Wiry should 
a minister be going over his accounts on Sunday, any 
move than the merchant or the banker? Why should 
he bring his private affairs into the great congregation, 
any more than the milliner or the cook ? If he is dis- 



RELIGIOUS BEGGARY. 187 

satisfied with the bargain which he made with the 
people, or if they do not fulfil their part of the contract, 
there are places and times when it is proper for him to 
enforce his contract, or to secure better terms. But 
to take his account-book into church, to preach his 
groceries for the gospel, to feed his u flock " with stale 
bread and scant}' steaks, makes his pastorate dear, 
even at the price of one apple-pie. 

What is the quality which suggests such a para- 
graph as this? — " As a St. Louis preacher was leaving 
the church last Sunday, an appreciative parishioner 
slipped a hundred-dollar-note in his hand as a reward 
for his excellent sermon. Perhaps, if there were more 
such parishioners, there would be more excellent ser- 
mons." 

Is it, indeed, only the voice of malice and all un- 
charitableness that calls ministers mercenary? I have 
quoted nothing from foes, only from ministers them- 
selves. Think what a sermon is represented to be, — 
the message of God to man by his appointed and 
anointed ambassador, the application of saving truth 
to souls sore-wounded and shot at by the archers of 
sin, light to them sitting in the darkness, salvation to 
the lost. And a man, an ambassador of heaven, will 
preach Christ and him crucified with more fervor and 
unction, if a hundred-dollar-note awaits him now and 
then in the pews below ! 



188 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

Benighted and blind leader of the blind ! Thy 
money perish with thee, because thou hast thought 
that the gift of God may be purchased with money. 
Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter ; for 
thy heart is not right in the sight of God. Repent, 
therefore, of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if, 
perhaps, the thought of thine heart may be forgiven 
thee. 

I do not join in the outcry that the clergy are mer- 
cenary. As a class, they are not mercenarj^. They 
give largely in proportion to their means. In a very 
large diocese of clergymen, I know not a single one 
who is miserly, or who is even charged with being 
mercenary. Yet the responsibilit}^ of the charge rests 
chiefly with themselves. It is because clergymen set 
up a standard for themselves different from the stand- 
ard of other men, that they are differently judged. 
They are ridiculed, not for exchanging a low for a 
high salary, but because they insist on calling the 
higher salary a louder call. No one says aught 
against the country school-teacher who goes to "the 
city schoolhouse, or the author who sells to the pub- 
lisher that pays the best, because these are reckoned 
as matters of legitimate business. But the clergyman 
assumes that the question of salary does not enter into 
his profession. He is concerned only to put himself 
where he will do the most good. Ministers are on 



RELIGIOUS BEGGARY. 189 

precisely the same ground as writers and other clergy. 
An author is entitled to sell his books to the highest 
bidder. But the author who lets the consideration of 
money into his writing, — the author who would write 
better for ten dollars than he would for one dollar, — 
the author, who, at any time and for any purpose, 
does less than his best, is mercenary, and unworthy to 
be an author. The minister may lawfully, manfully, 
and religiously go where he may receive the highest 
salary ; but no consideration of salary or hundred- 
dollar-notes may ever slip into the fountain whence 
his sermon springs. And, in view of such para- 
graphs as this, it may be questioned whether the same 
public sentiment which forbids a bribe to a judge, 
which has taken away the moiety from internal reve- 
nue collectors, which frowns upon the fee to waiters, 
should not, also, investigate the system of gifts to the 
clergy. But, however this may be, there can be but 
one opinion, — that it is more manly, more apostolic, 
more devout, to settle the question of salary in pri- 
vate, and in a business-like manner, than it is to dis- 
claim pecuniary considerations because Christ had 
not where to lay his head, and then stand up in the 
pulpit to flout at hotel-bills, and whine over an apple- 
pie. 

If the minister's be a peculiarly sacred calling ; if 
he devote himself to the salvation of souls ; if he have 



190 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

sacrificed all hopes of making a fortune, all prospects 
of personal advancement, to the cause of Christ ; if 
it be proper that extraordinary means should be em- 
ployed to assist him, because he has performed an act 
of extraordinary self-abnegation, — what then ? If he 
have only shifted the burden of providing himself 
with luxuries from his own shoulders to other peo- 
ple's, what sort of self-abnegation is it? A minister 
is expected to live, and generally does live, in as 
good style as the majority of his people. I think it is 
safe to say, that the average minister occupies as high 
a position, has as many of the comforts and luxuries 
of life, and perhaps as much money to spend, as he 
would have done in any other occupation. But be 
that as it may. A minister adopts his profession, 
either as a business or as a consecration. It may, 
and rightly, be both ; but it must be one. If it is 
a consecration, then this talk about parsonages and 
donations is not only idle, but it borders on the pro- 
fane. Jesus Christ had not where to lay his head. 
Must those who call him " Master," not only have a 
place to lay theirs, but have it secured to them by 
title-deed, hung with satin paper, carpeted from Brus- 
sels, and stocked with winter provisions? To go cold 
and hungry for the good cause is a sacrifice ; but to 
sit still, and hint to other people to haul in coal and 
flour and sugar for you — what sacrifice is that ? To 



RELIGIOUS BEGGARY. 191 

turn away from costly books and fine pictures, the 
desire of the eyes, and the pride of life, for Christ's 
sake, is the act of a devotee ; but to buy your books 
and pictures, and have your church come in at the 
yearns end, and pay your debts — is that devotion? I 
say that the man who does it follows no more closely 
the footsteps of the Master than he who goes into the 
" cotton trade and sugar line," and pays his own 
bills. 

Of course, it is absurd and unjust to ask ministers 
to suffer privations. Therefore, it is absurd to put 
these matters on other than a business-ground. A 
theological student may be never so conscientious and 
consecrated ; but he chooses his church on common 
business-principles, as it is proper he should. The 
only unwisdom is in talking as if he did not. He 
never remits a cent of his salary because he calls his 
parish a field of labor. When he leaves that parish 
for another, he says God has called him to another 
field of labor ; and the dismissing council says, Amen. 
But all it really means is, that the people are tired of 
him, or he of them ; or his salary is too small ; or the 
house is damp, and the situation unhealthy ; or he 
wants to live in a city ; or preach his old sermons ; or 
have a wider scope. God calls him to go just where 
the minister thinks, on the whole, he would rather go. 
If one or the other candidate should be defeated at the 



192 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

next election, it would be God calling them to another 
field of labor. There is no reason to suppose that the 
Deity is not just as much concerned with the shoe- 
maker who moves from Lynn to Boston, in prospect 
of higher wages, and better lectures and concerts, as 
with the minister who moves from Boston to New York. 
God calls us all, and in only one way, — by the use of 
our own reason ; and it would be just as pious, and a 
great deal more savory, if we would speak of it in a 
reasonable, and not in a supernatural way. We may 
be perfectly sure of our motives : we are not perfectly 
sure what God thinks about it. If people will not 
come to church, or will not pay their minister's salary, 
that is something tangible ; but precisely what attitude 
the divine Being assumes toward it is another thing. 
When the religious newspaper says that one of the 
members of a church in Chicago "planned a large 
addition to his dwelling ; but, after the cellar-walls 
were completed, the work ceased for about one year, — 
the reason for which, it was said, was, being president 
of the board of directors of the Chicago Theological 
Seminary, and seeing its pecuniary wants to be so 
pressing, he concluded to give up building, and appro- 
priate the money to the relief of the seminary, ' ' — we 
are ready to receive its testimony, because it testifies 
of what may have come within its scope. But when it 
goes on to say, " And, as another proof that God loves 



RELIGIOUS BEGGARY, 193 

the cheerful giver, his place of business was the only 
one belonging to the church which was not consumed," 
we are constrained to enter a demurrer. Was the 
president of the board of directors of the Theological 
Seminary the only member of that church whom God 
loved ? Was there no cheerful giver in all that burnt 
district, but him who gave up his new dining-room 
above the cellar- walls ? Is not the fact that Mrs. 
O'Leary's house and barn were the only ones in that 
quarter not burnt, an equally conclusive proof that 
God loves the woman who does her milking by a kero- 
sene-lamp ? Considering that Jesus has said that ' ' no 
man, having put his hand to the plough and looking back, 
is fit for the kingdom of God," and that " whom the 
Lord loveth he chasteneth," it is quite as reasonable, 
and quite as scriptural, to say that God hated the pres- 
ident for having begun to enlarge his house, and not 
being able to finish it, and punished him by leaving 
his shop standing amid desolation. And if the fire 
had induced Chicago to remove its business-centre, 
and the president's property should thus have depreci- 
ated, Madam President would be perfectly just in say- 
ing to her husband, "I told you so. You ought to 
have finished that kitchen while you were about it, and 
have been burned down like the rest, and so have 
reaped all the advantage of taking a new start." 

7s the work of God injured by a clergyman's pros- 
17 



194 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

perity? " A minister," says a high clerical authority, 
" whom the question of money or fame could influence 
to desert a more useful post for one more lucrative or 
more honored, is unworthy of that Saviour, who . . . 
4 made himself of no reputation,' and became exceed- 
ingly poor, to . . . accomplish man's salvation. He 
who toils and suffers like Christ, in obscure places, 
where frowns are thicker than smiles or applause, 
shall, like him, and with him, be at last exalted ; and 
every being in the universe shall know and acknowledge 
the excellence of his motives, and the success of his 
obscure toils. Christ says, ; If any man serve me, 
him will my Father honor.' " 

It is true that the gist of this remark is the exact 
opposite of what it is supposed and intended to be. 
A minister is not to be influenced by fame, because — 
fame is one of the strongest motives to which Christ 
appealed. It is unworthy, and a shame, to care what 
others say about you. Stay where you are, and every 
being in the universe will presently applaud you. 
The writer does not see that this is not laying aside 
the question of fame and honor, but putting a small 
and immediate fame against a remote and world-wide 
renown. Leaving that matter, however, the point to 
be observed is, that the useful and obscure place is 
set off against the more lucrative and more honored 
post, as if lucre and honor were separate from useful- 



RELIGIOUS BEGGARY. 195 

ness. But do not the very characteristics which make 
a ministry lucrative and honorable, by that token 
make it more capable of usefulness ? We cannot, of 
course, bring a mathematical certainty into moral 
forces ; but is it not generally considered that useful- 
ness increases with the enlargement of one ? s circle? 
The man who is known by six men may be just as 
good as the man who is known by six hundred; but, 
other things being equal, is not the man who helps 
six hundred men out of difficulty more useful than he 
who helps only six men ? On what other ground does 
the same journal from which I have quoted say else- 
where, " Who believes the usefulness of a laborer 
who raises a hundred bushels of corn a year to be as 
great as that of a village pastor, who, by his teachings, 
and the daily beauty of his example, ' allures to brighter 
worlds, and leads the way' ?" The laborer may be 
just as sweet-tempered, just as self-denying, just as 
devout and benevolent and blameless, as the village 
pastor. That, no religious newspaper or religious 
teacher will deny. As to the quality of his work, the 
production of food is universally admitted to be the 
one occupation that lies at the very foundation of life. 
Nothing can be more important than this, because, 
without this, no other occupation could exist. The 
superiority of the pastor, therefore, consists in certain 
qualities, in certain powers, which have been cultivated 



198 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY, 

in him at great cost, which command money, and 
which enable him to touch life at many more points 
than the laborer is able to do. The church which calls 
him away doubles his salary, and promises him a 
"larger field," — promises, that is, more listeners, 
more men and women to learn of him, to criticise his 
statements, to stimulate his intellect, to disseminate 
his views. All these are advantages ; but the increased 
salary is also an advantage. The larger the salary, 
the larger may be the life. An ample income is no 
more to be despised than good eyesight or great 
strength. If a man has qualities that command 
money, he has the same right to use them that he has 
to walk, or ride or row, for his health. A man is just 
as mighty to the upbuilding of Zion with five thousand 
dollars a year as with five hundred. He is no more 
mercenary in receiving ten thousand than he is in 
receiving one thousand. He may benefit his kind just 
as much on a salary of twenty thousand as on eight 
hundred and hints. 

The minister is on the same ground as other men. 
Only let him occupy that ground manfully. He should 
discard, once for all, the notion that he is a peculiar 
people. The nineteenth century knows neither priest 
nor Levite, but holds every laborer worthy of his hire. 
A minister has only to be simple and natural, to pro- 
pose or assent to terms, to enforce promptness, and 



RELIGIOUS BEGGARY. 197 

pay his debts like other men ; and ninet}~-nine out of 
eve^ hundred will uphold him. But what we cannot 
uphold is the grotesque commingling of sacred and 
profane things. What we cannot endure is the sub- 
stitution of a man for the Lord Christ. What we will 
not away with is the idea that the gift of God may 
be purchased with money, if a clergyman act as 
auctioneer. Yet to such straits as these are ministers 
reduced. They profess to be ambassadors of God, 
successors of Christ and the apostles. They are not 
money-makers. They cannot buy and sell, and get 
gain, as other men do, because their calling is holy. 
And under this sacred banner they will do and say 
things which violate the decorum of the world, shock 
the sensibilities of sinners, and bring a blush of shame 
to the cheeks of many a man who has been stolidly 
buying and selling all his lifetime. 

Do ministers like the role that has been assigned 
them, — not quite a woman, yet but half a man? Do 
they like the semi-charity which has tampered with 
their business-relations ? Do they like to have their 
homes invaded, their carpets chosen, their coats cut, 
let alone bead watch-pockets and winter provisions? 
It is a matter that lies entirely in their own hands. It 
is man's own free will, and not divine sovereignty, that 
inundates his house with bead watch-pockets. Parishes 
will never give their pastors donation-parties, if pas- 
17* 



198 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

tors decline to accept them. For the sake of the good 
ones, the}^ are willing to put up with the poor ones. It 
is the hope of a fruitful harvest that lures them into 
the disappointment of empty wains. If they would 
stand on the same footing as the lawyer and the farmer 
and the merchant, they would have no disappointment 
to bear. The people who flock to their minister's 
house, and give him useless trinkets in return for his 
bread and meat are precisely on a level with their 
minister. It is no more mean to go to a man's house 
for what you can get than for him to receive you for 
what you will give. It is barter on both sides. It is 
a travesty, and a profanation of hospitality; and 
whichever side is worsted in the scramble deserves no 
sympathy. 

Donations — the ecclesiastical term for gifts — are 
defended on the ground, that, without them, the minis- 
ter has not a sufficient salary. His people will pay 
twelve hundred dollars. They will not pay fifteen; 
but they will give the minister presents " amounting in 
value to three hundred dollars," so that he will receive 
and report a salary of fifteen hundred dollars. But this 
three hundred dollars has to do double duty, — as gift 
and salary. The people have the genial glow which 
arises from a generous act, and the calm content which 
springs from justice done. u What do you pay your 
minis ter?" asks the foreigner. "Twelve hundred 



RELIGIOUS BEGGARY. 199 

dollars is the nominal salary ; but really it amounts to 
fifteen" is the satisfied repl}\ But let the minister 
leave for another c ' field of labor ; " and the aggrieved 
comment is, u Should you think he could, when we 
had just made him that handsome present? " 

If a people can give their minister fifteen hundred 
dollars, they can pay him fifteen hundred. If he has 
earned it, it should be paid as wages, not doled out as 
charity, or bestowed as affection. It is for the minister 
himself to decide how large a salary he will claim, or 
with how small a one he will be content. If he agree 
upon five hundred, let him take his five hundred, and 
say no more about it. If he find himself mistaken, he 
can ask a higher ; and, if it be not granted, he can 
withdraw. But he can make it known from the begin- 
ning that his salary is salary, and not sentiment. 
Nothing is easier than for him to nip in the bud dona- 
tion-parties and subscription-presents, and all such 
makeshifts, by a simple announcement. A bargain 
between clergyman and parish is as practicable as any 
bargain and sale ; and the dignity of his office is no 
way infringed upon by proceeding on the principles of 
ordinary bargain. It is sadly infringed upon by the 
course which at present obtains. In what attitude 
appears the clergyman who complains that his flock 
overwhelm him with bead watch-pockets, and eat up 
his winter provisions? What becomes of his sacred 



200 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

office, while he is ridiculing the small-type Testaments 
which his donation-party has left in his parlors ? Apart 
from the vexation and uncertainty which he brings 
upon himself, the minister injures his people b}^ per- 
mitting them to flatter themselves that they are gener- 
ous, when they are not even just. If they pay him a 
sufficient salary, he has no reason to complain of 
meagre gifts. If they do not pay him sufficient, he 
wrongs them by letting them feel as if they did. He 
should train them to discrimination. He should make 
a contract, and keep it, like any other man. He 
ought not to complain that his salary is small, or that 
it is not promptly paid. He should stipulate for a 
larger salary, and enforce its prompt payment, and 
thus keep his business out of the pulpit. If his parish 
decline, the world is all before him where to choose. 
If he have no choice of places, he cannot dictate 
terms. He must view himself as a commodity which 
has small market-value, and must go for what it will 
fetch. Ministers with four or five thousand dollars' 
salary will stand in their pulpits, and complain, that, if 
they die, their children must go to the work-house, as 
if that were a fact in which the parish is concerned. 
The only question is : Did the minister agree to five 
thousand dollars? and does the parish pay it? If so, 
their responsibility is over, and the place of his chil- 
dren's death is impertinent. If he cannot live on five 



RELIGIOUS BEGGARY. 201 

thousand dollars, what cloth hinder hirn from going 
where he can get ten thousand ? It would be just as 
apostolic for him to do that as to stay, and grumble. 

Anecdotes are in circulation u illustrative of the 
close-fisted meanness of certain rural congregations 
in dealing with their ministers." If lions wrote his- 
tory, it would be found that there is a " congregation 
side," as well as a clerical side, to the close-fisted 

meanness of the rural districts. To Parson B , 

the story says, the parish agreed to pay four hundred 
dollars ; yet they fell short sevent3'-five dollars, and, 
when reminded of the deficiency, suggested that " min- 
isters should not be greedy of filthy lucre." After 
continually falling short, and excusing themselves, and 
leading their pastor a life of anxiet} T , till he grew old, 
infirm, and unable to do clerical duty, they at length 
took him to the alms-house, where he yielded up his 
life. 

This is a very mean way to treat a minister, but 
not half so mean as the minister who would permit 
himself to be thus treated. A man who cannot make 
any more headway than that against greed and avarice 
is dear at any price. A minister who preaches all his 
lifetime to a people, and cannot bring them up to the 
point of common honesty, has certainly mistaken his 
calling, and should be thankful that he is permitted to 
die peaceably in the alms-house. A man who will 



202 SEKMONS TO THE CLERGY, 

permit his congregation to cheat him year after year, 
who has not power enough to convince them of sin, 
nor nerve enough to leave them, may be a sincere 
Christian, and receive his reward at the judgment- 
seat ; but he certainly has not earned his salary in this 
world. He has helped to demoralize his people, 
instead of uplifting them. He has made the gospel a 
" savor of death unto death." 

It may seem cold-blooded and mercenary to discuss 
such matters on such grounds ; but nothing can be 
more mercenary and cold-blooded than for a minister 
to sneer at the gifts which his people bring him, and 
the greed with which they eat up his winter provisions. 
We have well-nigh lost the divinity which should 
hedge a gift ; and no class of persons have contributed 
more to this result than clergymen. The ideal gift is 
spontaneous, is useless, is private and sacred. It is 
the blossoming of assured love, or the timid outreach- 
ing of a love that craves assurance. We give dia- 
monds the most enduring, flowers the most fragile ; and 
love knows no distinction. In love, it is the giver who 
is uncertain, who is obliged : it is the receiver who 
confers obligation, and approves affection. It is only a 
long course of the most complete harmon}^ of the 
most profound and unwavering confidence, that justifies 
a man in being careless about gifts, and bestowing, in 
the matchless freedom of inviolable friendship, what is 
the ordained prerogative of charity. 



RELIGIOUS BEGGARY. 203 

In the hands of clergymen, the gift has fallen from 
its high estate. They have solicited it ; they have pro- 
claimed it ; they have computed and bruited its money- 
value, and mocked at its insignificance. They have 
debased it into the payment of a debt, confounded it 
with the discharge of a duty, profaned it by associa- 
tion with a grudge. They owe it to the congregations 
they have tampered with to sit for a generation in 
sackcloth and ashes, — sackcloth of their own buying, 
and ashes of their own burning, — and, with tight fists 
of integrity, to reject and repel the false gifts of tight- 
fisted meanness, of uncomprehending carelessness, 
while with uplifted voice they teach their people the 
eternal distinction between a tax wrung, a subscrip- 
tion badgered, a compromise effected, and the spon- 
taneous offering of brooding and delighted love. 



HEAYENLY HEATHENISM. 



HEAVENLY HEATHENISM. 

ffigpS^A T ANDING amid the ruin of a great disaster, 
|Ak7V~^ and seeing on all sides the ungainly relics of 
j^gggggj stately edifices, while one building, apparent- 
ly no better and no less endangered, remains unharmed, 
almost untouched, one instinctively inquires, "How 
could it be that this did not burn with the rest?" 
Says a pretty pietist in reply, " A kind Providence 
protected us. God did not mean that this store should 
burn. That is the way I account for it." 

A little farther up, out of the desolation, but close 
upon its brink, rises some such institution as an Emi- 
grants' Aid Savings-Bank, with a placard arched over 
the sign, to the effect that " God has protected the 
savings of the poor;" from which we are to infer, I 
suppose, that the Emigrants' Aid Savings-Bank has 
not gone out in the flame. 

Far be it from me to attempt to dissociate man from 
his Maker in ever so small a measure. Nothing is more 
wholesome, more heartening, than the ever-present 
consciousness of an ever-present God, interested in his 

207 



208 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

children, co-working for their good, watching over 
them with unceasing love and care and wisdom. But 
let us not, on that account, discontinue the use of our 
reasoning faculties. Whon a young girl, untaught 
either by books or by life, inexperienced, and without 
responsibility, utters a saintly sounding but senseless 
sentiment, we accept the saintliness as an omen of 
good, and hope the sense will come with years and 
exigencies ; but when mature business-men — men who 
hold other people's property in trust, bank directors 
and proprietors — publicly placard the divine favor as 
a reason of their exemption from disaster, it is time for 
stockholders to look into the books. 

" God moves in a mysterious way 
His wonders to perform ; " 

but he is in no proper sense a bank director, nor a 
fire-insurance company ; and it would seem as if even 
his divine patience would be taxed with our petty 
attempts to glorify him by attributing to him their 
functions. For look you, fair philosopher: a kind 
Providence protected you, you say ; and your shop was 
not burnt. Was it an unkind Providence, then, that 
refused to protect the shop across the street ? or did not 
Providence care, one way or another, and just let it 
burn? Does God love Hovey, and hate Holbrook? Is 
he kindly disposed toward Bigelow Brothers, but 



HEAVENLY HEATHENISM. 209 

hostile to Palmer and Bachelder? When Shreve, 
Crump, and Low succeeded in removing their goods to 
a place of safety, did they elude an ang^ God who 
had planned to burn them ? Do you really think that 
God cares more for Jordan and Marsh than he does 
for Stevenson ? Are Boston and Portland and Chicago 
any less dear to him than New York and Baltimore 
and Cincinnati? If God saved one house, did he set 
fire to the others ? 

Hard-headed money-man, when you say that God 
protects the savings of the poor, what do you mean? 
Did he protect the poor people of Peshtigo, who 
rushed from their burning houses to swift death by 
flood and flame ? Did he preserve the savings of the 
poor in Chicago ? Does he have more regard for the 
five cents which the sewing-girl puts in the bank than 
for the sewing-machine by which she earns it ? 

And why should God care for the savings of the 
poor any more than for the savings of the rich ? He 
(according to this philosophy) desolated whole tracts 
belonging to the rich. He swept away in a night the 
savings of years. Men who had grown rich from 
poverty grew suddenly poor from wealth. Was it the 
hatred of Deity ? Many of them were men who feared 
God, and honored him with their substance. The 
churches of Boston did not minish aught of their 
Thanksgiving contribution to the poor, though they 



210 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

had been fearfully marred by the fire. Does that 
indicate a quality that would be likely to incur the 
divine displeasure? The burned-out merchants of 
Boston are, so far as human eyes can judge, as worthy 
a class of people as the emigrants who come to us 
from abroad. They are as honest, as upright, as 
humane, I think I may say as devout. Compared 
with emigrants, one would say that God could have 
nothing- against them but their wealth ; but, if he dis- 
approves of wealth, it must be that he disapproves of 
the qualities that produce wealth. These are more 
likely to be sagacity, industry, prudence, integrity, 
than greed and dishonesty. They are far more likely 
to be those traits which in combination we call virtue, 
than those which we call vice. But when a man, 
using the talents of which he finds himself possessed, 
and the opportunities which are presented to him, 
becomes a rich man, a supporter of the churches, a 
patron of the arts, a promoter of education, does he 
pass thereby under the ban of Deity? 

Our piet3 r needs a stiff breeze of common sense 
blowing through it. We need to remember that God 
is no partial parent, caressing one child, and chiding 
another, but impartial, loving all, through evil report 
and through good report. The saved and the lost, 
the murderer and his victim, are alike children of 
one Father. The little barefoot boy is as dear to 



HEAVENLY HEATHENISM. 211 

his Maker as the dainty lady in her silken attire ; 
and the silken lady is as beloved of God as the 
barefoot boy. God is angry with the wicked every 
day ; but below the anger dwell love and untiring corn- 
passion, working alwa}'s for repentance and reformation 
in the guilty but beloved child. 

God no more saves a shop or a bank than he builds 
them. He does both, for he is the source of all 
things ; but he builds houses by the architect, and he 
saves them by the fireman. It has pleased him to 
enact that a nail shall go where it is driven ; that 
mortar shall harden in air, and clay by fire. We dis- 
cover these laws, and build houses, and live in them 
with great delight ; but we do not say that God built 
them. He has enacted that wood shall consume, and 
granite crumble, and water turn to vapor, and air to 
wind, by the action of fire ; and our houses burn, 

11 Our spirits consume, 
Our flesh is a flame : " 

but to say that God did it in any other sense than he 
does every thing is to outrage reason, and exasperate 
justice. It is good to be religious ; but it is not good 
to make God capricious. A great conflagration is 
kindled and fanned by natural causes. Its lesson is 
one of logic. We should aim to discover what pro- 
duced it, what increased it, what the duties it devolves 



212 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

upon us in attempting to prevent its recurrence, and to 
mitigate its consequences : but to overleap all these 
possible and comprehensible steps, and mount up into 
heaven, and define what part the Deity took in it, is a 
work of supererogation, of utter inconsequence and 
fatuity. The only legitimate way of finding out God 
is through his word and work, not through conjecture. 
The lazy fatalism of the Mohammedan is in no way 
allied to the intelligent trust of the Christian. God is 
as much dishonored by our attempts to fasten upon 
him our puerile ways of thinking, our feeble modes of 
acting, as by denying his existence altogether. An 
inscrutable God may still k be God ; but an inconse- 
quent, capricious, unreasonable God is — Atheism. 
The divine name is not a talisman for security, a 
charm against evil : it is the sign of one existence, 
the great I Am of the universe. What we can com- 
prehend, that we know. Beyond this, let us not 
wildly and profanely assume, but wait in reverent 
silence. 

And let us sometimes worship in reverent silence. 
A devout writer wishes to ' ' combat the idea that God 
can be worshipped at Boston and Chicago, but must 
be ignored during the thirty-six hours of travelling 
between Boston and Chicago." His idea of worship 
is the Jewish and Samaritan, not to say Gentile idea, 
that there is no worship but the external ceremony 



HEAVENLY HEATHENISM, 213 

performed in this mountain, or in Jerusalem, or in 
Delphos. He, apparently, never heard that the hour 
cometh, and now is, when neither in this mountain, 
nor yet at Jerusalem, but in spirit and in truth, any- 
where, shall true worshippers worship the Father. 

" A company of Christian workers," he says, 
"journeyed to Chicago, and beyond. Christ was with 
them at all times while journejing." He speaks, it 
will be observed, as coolly and confidently as if Christ 
were a Pullman porter, ticketed through without 
change of cars. A good many of us believe in 
Christ's help and comfort, know that there is such 
a thing as the full assurance of hope and of faith, 
and feel, sometimes, what seems to be a real and 
elevating communion with the divine Being ; but know- 
ing, also, the vanity, the impatience, the indolence, 
and selfishness which so easily beset us, we should 
shrink from asserting, and almost from believing, 
that Christ was with us in any other sense than 
that in w r hich he is always with his children, — the 
poorest, weakest, most wayward, as well as the 
stanchest and wisest. But to assume Christ's pecu- 
liar presence with a whole company for a whole trip, 
at one clip, seems rather more like assurance pure 
and simple than like the assurance of hope or faith, 
or any other Christian grace. But, " moreover, he 
was seen by others as with them ; " and this is the 



214 SERMONS -TO THE CLERGY. 

keynote of the whole performance. This Christian 
traveller has, or at least expresses, no other idea of 
Christian travelling than to be seen of men. He wants 
the Bible to be as freely used, and as fearlessly pe- 
rused, as a travelling hatter takes out his pass-book 
for an order. He has no other, at least he presents no 
other, conception of Christian travelling than saying 
your prayers, and studying your Sunday-school lessons, 
on the train. When the twilight of the first evening 
came, one of them (I venture to say it was the very 
man himself) remarked to his fellow-travellers, — 
not simply of their own party, but of the whole car, — 
that, " as this was their usual hour of worship at their 
family altars, they knew of nothing that should pre- 
vent them here," and accordingly fell to. It seems 
not to have occurred to them that the peculiarity of 
family prayer is its being offered in the sacred privacy 
of the family, and that what is sweet and tender and 
devout by the fireside may become ostentatious, con- 
ceited, and displeasing in the noisy publicity of a pro- 
miscuous, rattling railroad-car. The next thing they 
wanted was a state-room in the Pullman car to study 
their next Sunday's lesson in Mark. Why they should 
have wanted a state-room, it is difficult to surmise, as 
the Christian traveller takes special pains to inform 
us, that during all the singing, praying, and studying, 
" the door was left wide open." To be sure, Christ 



HEAVENLY HEATHENISM. 215 

implies and assumes, that, when we enter into our 
closet, we shall shut the door ; but these Christian 
travellers could not afford to have so much piet} r shut 
up in a state-room. They were altogether too economi- 
cal to waste thus the odor of sanctity ; and they left 
the door ajar, that it might be wafted through the 
whole car. It is true that Christ says, " When thou 
prayest thou shalt not be as the h}~pocrites are ; for 
they love to pray standing in the s}-nagogues, and in 
the corners of the streets," and in the Pullman cars, ' 
"that they may be seen of men." But we have changed 
all that. Christ was not a Christian traveller. To be 
seen of men is the very essence of Christian travel- 
ling. Its only trait in distinction from profane 
travelling is being seen of men. Not a word is 
said about behavior, — honesty, kindness, politeness, 
promptness, neatness, unselfishness, good-nature ; noth- 
ing at all of any thing but public appearance. 

The disgust and derision excited by his ill-breeding 
and self-conceit are recorded by this naive Christian 
traveller, without the smallest suspicion of their nature. 
He probably, to this day, never dreams that he played 
any thing but the man. One good old gentleman, 
indeed, afterward placed in the hands of some member 
of the party at Niagara a paper recording his love for 
God. But what of the official in charge, who, in spite 
of their family altars, replied afterwards to theii 



216 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

request for a state-room, with a knowing wink, and the 
remark that they " could have a nice time playing 
euchre ' ' ? The wink and the wit were lost on the im- 
pervious Pharisee who evoked them ; and he "frankly 
informed" the ungodly official, "that the next sab- 
bath's lesson in Mark was to be studied, as there would 
be no other opportunity." Equally wasted upon the 
Christian traveller was the sarcasm of the Episcopal 
clergyman, that " he took them for actors, performing 
their parts." Hands off, Episcopacy! You have got 
your chasubles and your maniples, and I know not 
what of incomprehensibilities ; but you are not to 
monopolize the theatricals of the church. We also, 
we Congregationalists, have our cap and bells ; and 
if any choirs of yours can jangle longer and louder 
than these Christian travellers, speak now, or else 
hereafter forever hold your peace. 

"Now this," says my martinet, "I call common- 
sense travelling." I thank thee, O God, that I am not 
as other men are, — devout at heart, silent, reverent 
toward God, respectful to man, not obtruding my per- 
sonal views and habits on strangers, shutting my closet- 
door to pray to God in secret. I thank thee, O God, 
that I do not count religion anything, unless it be seen 
of men. I believe nothing of right living, or true 
thinking, or of worshipping thee in the spirit, but only 
in perpetual talk, — talk to, talk at, and talk about. I 



HEAVENLY HEATHENISM. 217 

thank thee, that, rattle the railroads never so noisily, 
I can rattle louder still. Conductors may wink, and 
clergj'man frown ; but my pachyderm is impenetrable. 
I am that kind of fool, that, though thou bray me in a 
mortar among wheat, with a pestle, yet will not my 
foolishness depart from me ! 

But it is this sort of thing which gives us faith in 
Christianity, in spite of right-hand fallings-off and 
left-hand defections. Only a divine institution could 
withstand such advocac}', and remain respectable. 

There are a good many persons who are not dead in 
trespasses and silliness, but who yet are influenced by 
such sentiments. TKey are well disposed, busy about 
other matters, and rather apt to adopt views without 
discrimination, especially if they have a religious tinge. 
But it cannot be too strongly urged that such teach- 
ings as these, so far as they have any influence at all, 
are utterly destructive of simplicity of character. He 
who talks about reading the Bible freely and fearlessly 
in the railroad train has fallen from grace. He is not 
thinking about things, but appearances. He is not 
thinking about divine truths, but of how he looks read- 
ing them. He is not thinking of the Bible, but of 
himself. A man has no more occasion for fearlessness 
in reading the Bible in a car than in reading a news- 
paper or a novel ; and, if he thinks he has, it is only 
because he is swollen with conceit and self-importance. 

19 



218 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

And, if lie is a Boston Sunday-school teacher, the best 
thing he can do on his way to Chicago and Oregon is 
to leave his ''International Sunday-school Lessons" 
behind him. He will see little enough, if he keeps his 
eyes out of the window the whole time. If he rides 
through Michigan studying his question-book, he might 
as well have staid at home. The very object of travel 
is change. The Sunday-school teacher abroad should 
put his Sunday school as far put of mind as possible, 
and lay open heart and soul and mind to all new and 
strange scenes. If a man in his vacations cannot get 
on without the machinery of religion, that machinery 
is of little use to him, is likely to be of harm. If a 
man cannot feel comfortable at twilight, without stand- 
ing up in a Pullman car, and praying aloud before the 
passengers, he has prayed to little purpose before he 
stepped into the car. I do not say, that, among the 
group which assisted at this spectacular performance, 
there were not sincere and trustworthy Christians ; but 
I do say, that their reporter has succeeded in setting 
them in a singularly ridiculous and offensive light. 
And I venture also to add, that — outside of the artificial 
atmosphere of technical professional religionists, in the 
real instantaneous and solitary application of principle 
to action, without fuss or formality, or the observation 
of men ; in the strenuous wear and tear of life, — the 
religion that is silent and simple and modest, cherished 



HEAVENLY HEATHENISM. 219 

in the sacred and secret depths of the soul, self-mis- 
trustful, and not overbold, is more to be depended on 
than that other religion, which, however sincere, is ever 
patent and blatant, ready, like a Jack-in-the-box, to 
spring up into your face at the slightest touch, and 
which, fed by vanity and supported by admiration, is 
likely to have neither courage nor discretion left for 
the real emergencies of life, that come without warning 
and without witness. 

Is it Christ, or Apollo, that said, u Not every one 
that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the 
kingdom of heaven ; but he that doeth the will of my 
Father which is in heaven " ? 

When Chicago was cast down in dust and ashes, 
the whole world went out to her with compassion and 
succor. There was no solicitation. All hearts swelled 
with a passion of sympathy, whose only solace was a 
swift and eager giving. The most orthodox of our 
pulpits found itself exclaiming, " Who could read the 
telegrams last week, without a choking in his throat? 
Who could think of this great outpouring of compassion 
and bounty, without feeling that love is mightier, after 
all, than selfishness ; that the new commandment is, 
indeed, the highest law? " 

But is love mightier than selfishness? Then must 
not all things follow? Love is the law of heaven. 
Selfishness is the law of hell. If heaven is the 
stronger, surely heaven must prevail. 



220 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

We believe in original sin and total depravity, after 
a fashion. Indeed, in the midst of the falsehood, the 
slander, the malignity, the recklessness, the shame- 
lessness, of a political campaign, we believe in it after 
a very sturdy fashion. Somewhere in the human heart 
there seems to be a fountain of sin, which is easily 
unsealed, and which sends forth bitter waters. But 
what if, close alongside, lies a fountain, as accessible, 
of original purity, of total goodness? You touch the 
chord of selfishness, and man grasps and jostles, and 
turns neither to the right hand nor to the left. You 
smite the chords of love, and he stops in his gain- 
getting, flings all his eagerness into helpfulness, and 
becomes as a god. Never were our growing, hot- 
headed cities more bent on making money than they 
were on giving it away when trouble came. Never 
was their intelligence, their sagacity, their experience, 
their activity, more swiftly and imperatively summoned 
for their own advantage than for the succor of a suffer- 
ing neighbor on one memorable morning. Which is 
the fact, then, on which to base our creed? Why 
predicate total depravity, unless we predicate, also, 
total goodness ? Are we any more sure that men will 
sin than we are that men will save? May we not 
count as confidently on human generosity as on human 
greed? Does human nature any more quickly fall 
before temptation than it rises before opportunity? 



HEAVENLY HEATHENISM. 221 

Has it not an aptness for good as strong as its aptness 
for evil? 

To which is it, in the long-run, and sometimes in 
the run that is not very long, safer to appeal ? — the 
good, or to the evil passions ? Who is the more 
influential leader of his kind, he who assumes that 
men are corrupt, immoral, dishonest, tricky, or he 
who assumes that they mean to be honest, just, and 
candid? Why do men, in speaking to their fellows, 
always try to maintain the appearance of right, unless 
it be because there is still in the human breast an 
unspoiled appreciation and approbation of the right ? 

Right thinking is not, indeed, right doing ; but it is 
the first step which costs. And is there not, on the 
whole, more right doing than wrong doing? Sin in 
the mass is odious ; and the mass is immense. It is 
noisome and noisy : it is against wind and tide : it 
makes outcry, and attracts attention. Innocence and 
virtue and holiness are quiet and natural. Their voice 
is not heard ; but they are pervasive, and one might 
almost say, overpowering. The honest, generous, 
worthy people in almost any community outnumber the 
thieves, the misers, the worthless. The fathers and 
mothers, the brothers and sisters, do many more good 
deeds to each other than evil ; say many more kind 
words than harsh ones. But the ninety and nine 
respectable and exemplary families figure far less before 

19* 



222 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

the public than the one litigious and quarrelsome family. 
The one hasty word of the good husband stays longer 
in memor} T to harass and annoy than the twenty kindly 
and comfortable words to soothe. The little children 
play in the sunshine for hours, and nobody minds them ; 
but one howl of displeasure speedily rivets all the 
attention of authority. The mass of vice is immense ; 
but the mass of virtue — is it Hot, also, immense and 
immeasurable? Where, then, is total depravity? and 
what is total depravity? 

Shall we say that generosity and benevolence and 
sympathy are but natural traits, have no moral 
character, are destitute of holiness, and will not avail 
in the general summing-up ? that there is in them no 
more saving virtue than in the playfulness of the 
kitten, or the timidity of the lamb? But is it not the 
best thing possible to be said of Nature, that its 
unforced, spontaneous traits are noble? It is, surely, 
far better to be kind simply, naturally, unconsciously, 
than to be forced to make a fresh resolution every* time 
there is an opportunity for kindness. To be, without 
thinking, what, with your hardest thinking and 
strongest determination, you would wish to be, ought 
not to be counted a disadvantage. The strongest con- 
demnation we can pronounce against any sin is, that it 
is unnatural. In that do we not pronounce a eulogy 
on Nature ? 



HEAVENLY HEATHENISM. 223 

And if kindness and benevolence have no moral 
character, are simply temperamental and insignificant, 
shall not unkindness and malevolence come under the 
same head? If a man's good deeds to his neighbor 
shall go for nothing in the general judgment, because 
he did them, not from love to God, but simply out of 
a naturally kind disposition, shall not his evil deeds 
be equally set at nought, because he did them with no 
hatred, and no thought of God, but only out of that 
temper which his mother gave him ? 

One child is so rooted and grounded in love to his 
father, that he never thinks of disobeying him ; never 
thinks of the household rules as law, more than of the 
sun rising. Another rebels and revolts ; and it is only 
after a hard struggle, and much inward discussion, that 
he conforms to the household authority. Shall his 
submission be counted to him for righteousness, while 
the other's blameless walk, which is not submission, 
but harmony, counts for nothing? 

Sin is a terrible blot on the world's page ; but 
perhaps it is a blot, and not the page. For me, I am 
amazed at the amount of quiet, stolid, unswerving 
goodness that does not know itself for goodness, but 
thinks it is simply supporting the family, or paying the 
taxes, or training the children, or doing the fall sewing, 
or electing the candidate, or minding its own business 
generally, — goodness that rates itself too low to im- 



224 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

agine that the Deity could take any cognizance of it, 
but which I imagine to be an offering of a sweet savor 
unto the Lord, — goodness which wears no phylacteries, 
and flaunts no banners, nor ever thinks itself meet 
to enter even the outer court of the sanctuary, but 
before which, I fancy, the inner doors will one day 
part, on golden hinges turning. 



PRAYEE. 




PRAYER. 

jHE proposal of Prof. Tyndall, or his friend, 
to subject prayer to scientific tests, seems to 
have somewhat shocked, not to say angered, 
the religious world. Possibly, that is what the gentle- 
men wanted. Perhaps, however, they were sincere 
in their desire to ascertain the efficacy of prayer; 
or perhaps it was less to show their own disbelief 
than to convince the world of its unbelief. It is surely 
unnecessary to assume that they were actuated by un- 
handsome motives. Even if they were, would it not be 
wiser, and worthier the truth, to ignore that fact, and 
treat them as if they were simply mistaken, and 
sincerely inquiring, rather than attempt to cast odium 
upon them, to call them Sadducees, and their proposal 
a trap ? 

Why must it be a trap ? Why is not the test they 
propound just as fair as that named by Elijah to the 
prophets of Baal, to which we never raised objection? 
James said, u Is any sick among you? Let him call 
for the elders of the church ; and let them pray over 

227 



228 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord : 
and the prayer of faith shall save the siek, and the 
Lord shall raise him up." If we believe that James 
meant to state a truth of literal and universal appli- 
cation, why are the philosophers unreasonable? If 
we do not believe it, what do we believe ? 

To say that God will not answer a prayer that is a 
challenge, or prayer that proceeds from a doubt as to 
the efficacy of prayer, and that Christ always refused 
to give a sign, is hardly fair to Prof. Tyndall, and is 
not beyond question. Christ would hardly refuse to 
give a sign which was precisely what he had himself 
prescribed. If the prayer of faith shall save the sick, 
how is one to know that it is irreverent to ask all the 
faithful to pray for the sick? Elijah's proposal was a 
challenge of the most defiant sort ; and the priests of 
Baal showed, at least, the sincerity of their belief, by 
accepting it. We may, indeed, say that the challenge 
was not given to the true God, but to the false god. 
But we cannot place the divine Being in the attitude of 
proposing what he would decline to accept. He surely 
showed conclusively that he was not offended by being 
subjected to a material test. It was not, indeed, sci- 
entific ; but it was purely popular. Gideon, in great 
doubt and fear, sought an arbitrary sign from Heaven ; 
and it was granted him once and again. Christ did re- 
fuse to give signs, but not when something was asked 



PRAYER. 229 

in direct conformity with his directions. Elijah had 
great faith ; but Gideon, apparently, had little. If it 
does no good for any person to pray who does not 
believe in prayer, if prayers have no effect except when 
offered by persons who have no doubts to set at rest, 
alas ! would not the lips of the world be well-nigh 
sealed? I have not so learned Christ. It seems to 
me that God is so abundantly and immeasurably-kind, 
considerate, and helpful ; he is so eager that we 
should confide in him, and love him ; he is so anxious 
to put us into communication with himself, and yet 
so unable to do it without our concurrence, — that he 
clutches at a straw as it were. He comes out to meet 
us while we are yet a great way off. He catches the 
first glance turned toward him, even though it be of 
gloom and doubt. He accepts even an unreasonable 
and arbitrary challenge. He is glad to hear us say, 
" Lord, I believe: Lord, I believe,' ' even though we 
contradict ourselves in the next breath, and cry out, 
" Help thou mine unbelief." He will hear and answer 
the prayer that is offered with halt and hesitancy ; 
that has scarcely a stronger hold on the soul than has 
the spider's web on the tree from which it trembles. 

Does not the question, after all, turn on the nature 
of pra} T er, and, by implication, on the proper objects of 
prayer? The Bible certainly seems to teach, that 
prayer for direct, personal, material objects, will be 

20 



230 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

literally answered. We who have grown abstract 
and philosophical are inclined to reject the theory, 
and say that the only prayers to which we ought to 
expect literal answers are prayers for spiritual gifts. 
We may pray that our friends recover their health, 
but with the proviso, if it be God's will. So, then, if 
our friends die, the prayer is not lost. We pray 
that we may be of forgiving temper. That needs no 
proviso, because we know it is the will of God that we 
should be forgiving. Such prayer, then, will surely be 
answered. But, says the scientist, "if the disease be 
an incurable one, all the prayers of all the world will 
not cure it. Filth brings fever. Prayer cannot inter- 
pose." And we admit the force of the statement. 
But law has no more force in the physical than in the 
moral world. The heart is just as truly, if not just as 
directly, under the sway of logic, it is just as subject to 
cause and effect, as is the head. God cannot make 
me good without my concurrence, any more than he 
can make me healthy. I must take just as reasonable 
and definite measures against malice, envy, and un- 
charitableness, if I have a tendency that way, as 
against rheumatism and typhoid-fever. A forgiving 
temper is as much within my own grasp as physical 
vigor, and as unattainable outside of certain conditions. 
God as really desires I should be well as he desires I 
should be good. I pray him to enable me to forgive 



PRAYER. 231 

my foe ; and I at once turn about, and speak peaceably 
to him, and help him bear his burdens. I pray God 
to conduct me safely on my journey ; and I take care 
never to step upon the train when it is in motion. 
But if I am weak, and fall into revenge ; if I am late, 
and fear to miss the train, and, in each case, come tG 
grief, — is prayer unanswered, and of no avail? 

Reason does not forsake the spiritual to control the 
material world. The two worlds are one, — subject to 
the same law of cause and effect, ruled by the same 
sovereign. The Lord our God is one Lord. If the 
little geological hammer shivers the efficacy of prayer 
for material blessings, it annihilates with the same 
blow all prayer for spiritual blessing. If science will 
not permit God to refresh the thirsty earth with falling 
showers, in response to the prayers of the saints, 
neither can it permit him to refresh their thirsty souls 
with the dews of divine grace. 

I do not believe any theory of prayer can be framed 
which will satisfy either the believer or the unbeliever. 
There is a whole universe to rove through, and we 
know very little about it all. It is not only that the 
stars in their courses fight shy of us ; but we are living 
every day in close contact with forces, of whose nature, 
origin, and ends, we are almost totally ignorant. It 
is not only we, the people, who walk " in a vain show ;" 
but the scientists hold their knowledge by the most 



232 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

insecure tenure. The learning of one generation is 
the rubbish of the next. " God cannot contravene his 
own laws," says the philosopher. " Why pray that he 
should?" But tell me, O my philosopher, what are 
God's laws ? Once it was a divine law that heat was 
caloric, a latent substance in all bodies : now it is 
divine law that heat is no substance at all, but a mode 
of motion. Once the law bade the sun go around the 
earth: now it sends the earth spinning around the 
sun. Once the law made light to be the emanation 
of matter from luminous bodies ; then it was the 
undulation of ether, pervading all bodies : now it 
looks as if light were decreed to be the vibrations of 
the molecules of matter itself. Once the law made 
sharp and essential distinctions between mind and 
matter : now the correlation of forces transmutes 
bread and butter into thought, and philosophy is but 
phosphorus on the brain. Surely the condemnation 
of Christian devotion is premature. Further investi- 
gation may yet discover prayer, too, among the 
secretions. 

Indeed, the philosopher's refusal to recognize prayer 
as a possible force seems to me eminently unphiloso- 
phical. After long and elaborate treatises to prove 
that muscular power is correlated with nerve-power, 
and nerve-power with will-power ; that mental opera- 
tions are directly correlated with physical activities j 



PRAYER. 233 

that external material force may become a mode of 
internal consciousness ; that emotion may be converted 
into movement, — they turn around, and affirm that one 
special ' form of emotion cannot be converted into 
movement, a certain mode of consciousness, a certain 
exertion of will-power, one especial form of mental 
and moral operations, can have no influence whatever 
upon physical activities. Our magi are ready to swear 
to the correlation and conservation of forces ; but they 
must select the forces. 

Learned and logical Herr Professor, we believe in 
you profoundly. Whether you go down into the 
darkness of the under-world, or up into the very 
brightness and substance of the sun, we follow you 
with unequal steps, but with reverent eyes and de- 
lighted hearts. Many things which you say we must 
take on trust ; but the results of your difficult and 
occult processes we receive gladly. But if you put 
prayer outside the pale of cosmical forces, if }^ou de- 
monstrate that it is only a name, and nothing more, 
we may not refute your argument, or resist 3-our 
action ; 3-et, all the same, not one single believing 
heart is shocked one hair's-breadth out of its position 
by your flawless argument. This is one of the facts 
you must build on, and it is as indisputable as an 
alkali. We pray, not because it is reasonable or 
logical to pray, but because we cannot help it. Does 
20* 



234 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

Mr. Galton say that " prayer is but a signal of 
distress, the outcry of the hare in mortal terror of the 
hounds " ? . Why, even thus he concedes every thing. 
It makes prayer organic, natural, real. Admit that 
praj^er is what it seems to be as truly as is the cry 
of the hunted hare, and we need ask no more. 

We know well that typhoid-fever is generated by 
ignorance and negligence. We are ready to believe 
that the germs of disease have a fatal affinity, so to 
speak, with certain living tissues ; but, when the child 
of the house is prostrate and tossed with fever, all the 
treatises in the world would not keep the father and 
mother from pushing to Heaven constant and earnest 
implorings for his recovery. In the early morning, 
as you stand at your window, looking over the green 
world, all sparkling and dewy, all alight and alive, 
your soul rises to God in praise and exultation, — not 
by a mental causation, perhaps, but upborne by a no 
less powerful moral instinct, which is, also, not without 
the line of causation. If you come to that, you may 
resolve the dew, and the brightness, and the fertility 
into vapors and suction and absorption, the blind 
workings of Nature, the simple procession of cause 
and effect, for which no one has any especial call to 
be grateful. But we are grateful. We do praise the 
Lord for it. All nations, in all ages, have ascribed 
glory to God. Find room for that fact in your system 



PRATER. 235 

of philosophy, or your induction must be incom- 
plete. 

We are ready to relinquish our philosophical theories 
whenever you speak the word. We are not indisso- 
lubly wedded to the syllogism. We shall never make 
any fight against the convertibility of forces, or the 
indestructibility of matter. In the heavens and the 
earth, and the waters which are under the earth, in 
the solar system, and the whole boundless universe, 
you shall have every thing your own way ; but suffer 
the little children, and forbid them not, to say, " Our 
Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name." 

And except ye become as little children, and until 
ye become as little children, and in as far as ye do 
not become as little children, I do not see but you 
will have to wander forever in the outer darkness of 
your molecules and your imponderables, your dynamics 
and your transmutations, and never enter into the 
warm, loving, certain kingdom of heaven. 

No doubt, at heart, the philosophers are far better 
Christians than they make themselves out to be. 
They have a profound trust in protoxides, and a 
simple faith in the spectroscope, which promises to 
keep bright their power of faith and trust. And if 
they do seem to remit the Deity to the further end of 
the chain of causation, and allow him no part nor lot 
in the affairs of to-day, nevertheless, he is not far 



236 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

from every one of us, and, haply, they feel after him, 
and find him, even in a chemical experiment or an 
astronomical observation. 

Nor are we, Christians after a sort, such hypo- 
crites as they fear, although we do not readily accept 
their suggestion of concerted and concentrated prayer. 
The reasons that we give for our refusal may not be 
coherent or consistent ; but the one unanswerable 
reason is, that we do not like the idea. It is repulsive. 
If you cannot see why, O philosophers ! never mind. 
The fact remains ; and it is an insurmountable objec- 
tion, just as truly as if it bristled with premise and 
conclusion. 

" The reason why I cannot tell; 
But I don't like you, Dr. Fell." 

And Dr. Fell would have been no more completely 
rejected if he had been a villain, and therefore rejected. 
Somebody, who apparently believes that the Deity is 
of the Chinese persuasion, and will hear a clash of 
gongs, when he would be deaf to a u still, small voice," 
proposed, that, when the blare of trumpets should have 
died out of the Peace Jubilee House, a world's prayer- 
meeting should be gathered there from all quarters of 
the globe. The suggestion fell flat upon the public 
ear, and was never heard of more ; but it was not in 
the least because Christian America does not believe 



PRAYER. 237 

in prayer. We are bad enough, Heaven knows (and 
it is a great comfort that Heaven does know it) ; 
but, amid all our dissensions and distractions and 
inconsistencies, the one thing on which we are most 
closely united, the one thing in which we believe both 
instinctively and intellectually, is prayer, not dis- 
tinctively in social prayer, in public prayer, in formal 
prayer, but in the unforced, spontaneous, irresistible 
outflow of the human soul to a personal, sympathizing, 
all-comprehending God, in whom we live and move, 
and have our being. 

It seems to me, learned and beloved Prof. Tyndall, 
that if you would only say the Lord's Prayer every 
night, reverently and really, as such a> man as you 
must needs say it, if he say it at all, the problem of 
prayer would soon solve itself. And it is worth 
while to observe, that, while there are prayers and 
prayers, the Lord's Prayer seems to cover the ground. 
All the good in all the world is comprehended in those 
simple, succinct formulas. They are relegated largely 
to children and Episcopalians ; but adults have not 
outgrown them, nor have even Congregationalists 
devised an}^ thing better. I cannot think of a blessing 
to be desired, an evil to be averted, which is not 
included in the Lord's Prayer ; and we are expressly 
warned not to lay stress on much speaking. Still, if 
the soul wishes to go outside the form presented by 



238 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

our Saviour, and voice its wants in its own words, I 
suppose the Lord God will still be attent. 

Shall I give a little narrative that proves nothing, 
and may go for nothing, but is, nevertheless, not 
unconnected with our theme ? 

Said my friend, a simple, unlearned woman, " I 
wanted a servant. My house was in order ; and I was 
ready to set up housekeeping. I went to the intelli- 
gence-offices. The same shabby benches of shabby 
women, rough, untidy, repulsive. My heart sank 
within me at the thought of organizing a home on such 
a basis. It occurred to me, would it do any good — 
in fact, would it be right — to pray over it ? If good 
servants are not to be had, God himself cannot bring 
me one. Moreover, the supply is extremely limited, 
and the demand very great. I was not in sore need. 
There were a great many other women to whom a 
competent servant meant health, peace of mind, con- 
tent with life : to me, it meant only freedom from 
annoyance ; and I was so rich in happiness, in comfort, 
in occupation, in satisfying friendships and natural 
life, that it seemed selfish to be craving the good serv- 
ant which other women needed so much. And with 
it all was a doubt whether God ever intended us to 
throw such things on him. Having given us ability to 
help ourselves, would it not be like indolence to ask 
him to help us? And, ignorant as we are, is it ever 



PRAYER. 239 

safe to set our hearts upon anything in particular? 
Still I wanted the right one so much, and did not in 
the least know how to get at her. So, all quietl}', and 
with never a thought of breathing it to any one, I 
made a little arrangement with the good God, that if 
it could be done without depriving any one else of 
assistance, and if it were not a thing so much my 
own business that I had no right to trouble him about 
it, and if, in addition to all the rest of my satisfactions, 
he could afford to let me have the satisfaction of a 
good servant, why I should be very glad and grateful. 
But I stipulated expressly that I would not presume 
on an affirmative answer, and that a negative answer 
should apply only to this particular case. If nothing 
came of it, I would, perhaps, be more backward about 
trying again; but I would not promise not to try 
again. 

11 On my way to the intelligence-office, it came into 
my power to attempt a good service for an absent 
acquaintance. It would cost me two or three hours 
of time, a good deal of discomfort, and interruption of 
my present pursuit ; and the woman in question had 
showed herself entirely unappreciative, not to say 
resentful, of previous favors. I had a thousand minds 
not to go ; but it occurred to me, that here was I 
asking a doubtful favor for myself. I was not sure I 
was on legitimate ground there ; but I was quite sure 



240 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

in doing a kind act. Was it rather bribing the good 
God? Perhaps so. But I knew he could not be 
bribed : so there was no harm done. My errand over, 
I went to the intelligence-office. Immediately a 
young woman was presented to me, so pretty, modest, 
and ladylike, that I thought she could not be a servant ; 
but she was. I put several questions, which she 
answered so satisfactorily, and her whole appearance 
was so prepossessing, that I was taken aback, and 
actually sat and stared at her. I don't know what the 
poor creature thought of me ; but I was thinking over 
and over again, c I wonder if God did send you.' It 
seemed just like the Old Testament. And yet it 
seemed, also, somehow, as if God was making fun of 
me, you know. But there was nothing to do but take 
her home. On my way home, it came into, my power 
again, by taking some trouble, to do another small 
kindness to certain good friends. I was just as uncer- 
tain where I stood as before ; but I said, ' If there is 
any such thing as putting God under bonds, I will do 
it. He shall have no excuse for not obliging me in 
my indisposition to oblige others.' Well, I have not 
got over it yet. Here is my pretty handmaiden, neat 
and trim and tidy, intelligent, capable, sweet-tempered, 
quiet, respectful, modest, — a girl that I can really 
love, not with what theologians call the love of benev- 
olence, but with the love of complacency, — a servant 



PRATER. 241 

who is in her place a lady. Now, as she moves about 
the house with noiseless footfall, as I see the brown 
hair put smoothly back from her delicate forehead, as 
I mark the varying flush in her round cheek, as I look 
into her deep, earnest eyes, it is not simply that a 
helpful, healthful Scotch lassie is making life pleasant 
to me ; but I say over and over again in mute apos- 
trophe, ' I wonder if God did send you.' It is such 
a perfect answer, that it does not seem as if it could 
be an answer at all. But, if it is not an answer, 
should you think God would let it happen so ? " 

Wise men of the East and of the West, this is not 
argument. It is hardly illustration. It is only a 
specimen of the way in which the minds of the un- 
learned work. You know perfectly well that God had 
nothing to do with it, but that it was simply the 
result of long trains of Scotch history and American 
politics. But political and historical scholars are few ; 
while the men and women are many in the world, who, 
not with gong and trumpet, in the open squares, but 
silently, in their own hearts, in a thousand modes and 
forms, are putting God to the test. "There is no 
speech nor language. Their voice is not heard." 
They can give no physical nor metaphysical formula 
that can for a moment resist your logic ; but it is borne 
in upon them somehow, that God stands the test ; and 
against this solid, deep-seated, lifelong conviction, 
believe me, you will never make any headway. 



TEA-PAETY SALTATION. 




TEA-PARTY SALVATION. 

JHE problem of saving young men from moral 
destruction in large cities is of vital impor- 
tance to the Church, and perhaps an incident 
. . . may help to solve it. For two evenings in suc- 
cession, one of the elders of" [a certain] u church had 
noticed two young men in the lecture-room, appar- 
ently strangers in the city. Entering into conversa- 
tion, he found that neither belonged to any church 
organization, but both were favorably disposed in that 
direction. In response to a question, one of the young 
men said, that it was the first time in seven years " 
[they had been that time in ] u that any Chris- 
tian man had spoken to him about his soul. The elder 
invited the young men to take tea with him at his 
house, which they accepted. The sequel was, that 
both young men became regular attendants upon the 
sabbath school and church; and both are now con- 
verted and active members of the church. The 
incident has a moral and a sermon in it." 

The incident has two sermons in it. The one more 

21* 245 



246 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

commonly preached is to church-members, to the effect, 
that, if a young man loses his soul, it is rather their 
fault, in that they have not " spoken" to him about 
it. The other was preached, many years ago, to the 
young man himself: " If thou art wise, thou art wise 
for thyself; but, if thou scornest, thou alone shalt bear 
it." 

It is not to be denied, that the problem of saving 
young men from moral destruction is of vital impor- 
tance to the Church ; but it is also undeniable, that 
it is of equally vital importance to the young men. 
Selfishness, indifference to our neighbor's weal, and 
neglect of his claims, are sins ; but the warmest 
Christian interest in another's welfare is always to 
be cherished in deference to the requirements of good 
breeding and good sense. Much of our religious talk 
seems to proceed on the assumption that a young man 
is a moral infant, who must be kept from hurting him- 
self by ecclesiastical petting. There is strength in as- 
sociation ; but, if association is to relieve a grown man 
from the necessity of standing alone, it cannot be too 
soon dissolved. The object of combination is to util- 
ize, not neutralize, strength. Strength is to be turned 
into force, not into weakness. 

Here is a young man who has been seven years in a 
church-going city, — himself a church-goer, — and says 
this is the first time any Christian man has spoken to 



TEA-PART T SALVATION. 247 

him about his soul. What does he mean ? There are 
churches in that city : there are young men's Christian 
associations, to which every young man is again and 
again, and in many ways, welcomed. There are min- 
isters who every Sunday are honestly and earnestly 
tr}'ing to point out to their hearers the way of life. 
Every word spoken was intended for these young men. 
They had, moreover, the Bible and all the insti- 
tutions of a Christian city. Every avenue to the 
kingdom of heaven was as wide open to them as the 
clergy and the church could open it. No elder of any 
church can tell them how to become a Christian, any 
better than they can tell themselves. The Bible is 
his source of information ; and a New Testament can 
be bought anywhere for twenty-five cents. Instead 
of censuring the neglect of the churches, I censure 
the egotism of the young men. It was not that 
no Christian had spoken to them about their souls, 
but that no one had taken notice of their special 
personality. No one had flattered their vanity by 
addressing them as Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown. They 
would not join the church until they had been invited 
to tea. 

Many years ago, a half-witted negro, called Pompey, 
was to be hung for having murdered his master. The 
Sunday before his execution he was taken to church, 
and sat, the sermon through, on a stool in the broad 



248 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

aisle. The minister prayed for him fervently; but 
when he was returned to his cell, and asked if he heard 
the prayer, he asserted and insisted that the minister 
had not prayed for him at all. "He never said, 
4 Poor Pomp ' once." The good clergyman was in- 
formed of Pompey's incredulity ; and in the afternoon 
he prayed with renewed and real fervor for "Poor 
Pomp " by name, to Pompey's great edification and 
consolation. 

Young men in this age and country have no more 
reason to charge neglect upon church-members for not 
speaking to them about their souls than had Pomp to 
charge neglect upon his pastor. All their grievance is, 
that the deacons do not say, "Poor Pomp." They 
have not been invited to tea. I do not say that the 
elders shall not, for Christ and the Church, invite them 
to tea, and talk about their souls. If they have no 
power to reason, if they have no original thought, if 
they have no conviction and no principle, perhaps 
there is nothing left but to work upon their emotion. 
If " poor Pomp " is helped by the mention of his name 
to reach feebly up to God, it is a small thing — and 
yet not small — to name him. But I do say that the 
young man is egotistic, self-conceited, and, as yet, very 
shallow, who brings this forward as a reason why he 
has not joined the church. That is a question for 
himself to decide. Either it is his duty, or it is not. 



TEA-PARTY SALVATION. 249 

Society furnishes him with every opportunity of 
enlightenment on the subject. No man has spoken to 
him about his soul ? But has he spoken to any man 
about his ? The church-member has no more responsi- 
bility for the young man's soul than the young man has 
for the church-member's. Whatever the pulpit says to 
its elders, it ought ever and ever to say to the young 
man: "If thou art wise, thou art wise for thyself; 
but, if thou scornest, thou alone shalt bear it." What 
the State and the Church want, is, not the surging and 
swaying of the populace, not the blind force of an 
unreasoning multitude, not people who go as they 
are led, but strong individual character, — young 
men and young women who think for themselves ; who 
unite with the church, or remain outside, from intelli- 
gent conviction, from well founded principle, — men 
who can give a reason for their hope and their action ; 
who can reject error without becoming disgusted with 
truth ; who can resist temptation, without crying to 
others to resist that which is no temptation ; who can 
do right simply and naturally, without making a scene, 
and without calling upon bystanders to come and 
behold how sublimely they are devoting themselves to 
the cause of Christ ; who can stand erect, without 
clamoring to be bolstered up by religious nurses, or 
supported by ecclesiastical standing-stools ; who go to 
church to worship God, and not to be patted on fhe 



250 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

back by an elder ; who walk the narrow path in stout 
leathern shoes and with their own oaken staff, and do 
not need to be escorted along on tiptoe by some 
sturdier servitor. 

Different cases require different treatment. There 
is no law save the universal law of love and wisdom. 
Doubtless there are times when a gentle and friendly 
word falls like balm on the wounded spirit. Blessed 
is the man who pours in oil and wine. Doubtless 
there are shrinking and sensitive souls that must be 
won out of their shadowy solitude into the more 
wholesome sunshine of companionship. There are 
reckless, rollicking revellers, whom a word may touch, 
whom a tender solicitude may soften, when sermons 
and books would glance off, and leave them unmoved. 
But behind all these remains a class whose stock in 
trade is innuendoes, insinuations, and accusations 
against the Church, — men who want to be coaxed and 
cajoled ; who love the little sensation of standing out, 
and having the Church bemoan itself over its languor 
and laxity in bringing them in ; who reckon themselves 
a sort of martyr to the neglect of Christians. 

To such it seems, sometimes, as if it would be well 
to preach the gospel after another fashion, — at least, 
by way of experiment, — and say, u Why, go to the 
Devil, if you choose. It is nobody's affair but your 
own. If you prefer dissipation and death to honor and 



TEA-PARTY SALVATION. 251 

life, who is the loser? You may bring shame to inno- 
cence, and grief to gray hairs ; but their trouble is 
short, and to them " joy cometh in the morning." It 
is your own self, and nobody else, who will bear the 
sorrow and the scar forever. But you are a free agent. 
Go your own way. If you prefer to stay outside, on a 
fancied punctilio, rather than come in to our hospitality 
and society ; if }^ou think it more manly to stand aloof, 
and criticise the brethren, than to cast in your lot with 
them, at the risk of being yourself criticised, — do so. 
" If thou art wise, thou art wise for ttryself." But do 
not think, that, in so doing, you are rebuking the 
brethren, or approving yourself a inart} r r. You are but 
showing yourself a foolish and sentimental young 
person, who needs, like Mr. Smallweed, a thorough 
shaking-up. You cannot yourself think your soul is 
of any great account, if you will maunder on seven 
years because nobody happened to speak to you about 
it." 

This may seem a harsh gospel, and I admit that it 
should not be indiscriminately preached ; but I am 
sure there is a mental fibre that needs it. 

The ignorant and stupid outcasts of civilization, the 
unhapp} 7 , poverty-stricken waifs who have not so much 
as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost, any Christ, 
any loving Father, — these must be minutely and per- 
haps individually instructed ; but why should an intel- 



252 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

ligent, church-going adult need any one to speak to 
him about his soul ? Especially why should he wish or 
expect a stranger to do so ? It is a delicate matter, 
when you come to that. There are few more cloistered 
and sacred possessions than a man's soul. If the 
principle is once established, that the presence of a 
person in church is sufficient reason for any member to 
question him about the most interior concerns of life, 
the result will be, that persons who have any individu- 
ality worth speaking of will stay away from church. 
Some learned and pious ancient worthy is said to have 
made a resolution never to talk with any one five min- 
utes, without speaking about the salvation of his soul. 
Would he think it proper to introduce the topic of a 
man's income, courtship, or domestic economy after 
an acquaintance of five minutes? Yet these are con- 
cerns far less intimate than religion. They concern 
only a man's dealings with his fellow-beings : religion 
concerns his relations with his Maker, — relations 
which even to himself are but imperfectly compre- 
hended, and by his Maker only are thoroughly under- 
stood. Shall the acquaintance of five minutes' 
standing presume to intermeddle? 

But it is said that these relations are of so much 
more importance than any other as to justify extraor- 
dinary measures. Extraordinary caution, but not 
extraordinary precipitancy. The more momentous 



TEA-PARTY SALVATION. 253 

and delicate an affair, the more careful should we be 
in treating it. It is safer to leave the intelligent mind, 
the enlightened heart, of our age and country, to the 
influence of the Holy Spirit working through Church 
and Bible and Divine Providence, than it is to attempt 
to mould it with irreverent and unskilful hand. When 
Uriah profaned the ark of God with unseemly touch, 
he not only lost his life, but he did not advance the 
ark. The amount of mischief that is done by a coarse 
handling of the soul's most delicate concerns has 
never been estimated ; but souls are grievously marred. 
We are told of the persons, here and there, rescued 
from sin by a rough and ready word ; but no account 
has ever been kept of those who have been repelled, 
disgusted, and alienated. 

I question the kind of conversion that comes of hob- 
nobbing, Unless a man is convicted of sin, and con- 
vinced of truth, strongly enough to come out against 
the one, and for the other, of his own will and motion, 
is any thing accomplished ? Tea-drinking and caresses 
and sympathy are pleasant ; but they are not principle. 
It is pleasanter to be taken by the hand to a cheerful 
home than to go to a boarding-house alone ; but it is 
an appeal to the social, and not to the religious nature. 
I do not say it is wrong or undesirable : on the con- 
trary, not only Christianity, but humanity, demands, 
that, on every possible occasion, we should let our light 

22 



254 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

shine, — the light of home and love and human brother- 
hood no less than that of integrity and uprightness. 
But that does not dispense with the necessity of dis- 
criminating between affection, gratitude, and social 
magnetism, on one side, and innate rectitude on the 
other. The result of our ecclesiastical tactics does 
not indicate so brilliant a success as to forbid all 
question as to the wisdom of the methods by which it 
has been obtained. Neither in the quantity nor the 
qualit} 7 of our church-membership are we invulnerable. 
We are not sufficiently rooted and grounded in the 
faith that conversion is good for any thing only as it 
affects character. If the only change is, that a man 
goes regularly to church and Sunday school, while for- 
merly he went to neither, he might as well have staid 
unconverted. If the only result of the tea-party be, 
that a young man is now an active member of the 
church, whereas he was formerly no member at all, the 
elder who invited him has not got back the money's 
worth of his tea. A man is not necessarily a particle 
better for teaching in Sunday schools, or going to 
prayer-meetings. To draw him into the church by 
flattering his vanity, by ministering to his self-love, by 
making him an important and conspicuous partner in a 
close corporation, is not certainly improving either the 
man or the church. He ought to come in by his own 
mind's working and his own heart's leaning. He 



TEA-PARTY SALVATION. 255 

ought to come in, at once being and becoming a 
stronger man, more patient, more energetic, more con- 
siderate, more temperate or more spirited, more indus- 
trious or less worldly, more generous or less prodigal, 
more severe or more lenient, according to his weak- 
ness. It does not signify whether or not he is ready 
to lead the brethren in prayer ; but is he less grasping 
in his dealings than he was, less vain, less self- 
centred, less exacting? Do the sinners whom he 
trades with find him more punctual in keeping his 
engagements ? Is he more careful not to be sharp and 
selfish at home ? Is he more charitable in judgment, 
more intolerant of rascality, even in respectable garb ? 
It is not those who are the most forward to speak, or 
to be spoken to, about their souls, who have necessarily 
the most pure and undefiled and trustworthy religion. 
There are people who would rather be talked about as 
backsliders than not be talked about at all. There are 
people who will boast of the enormity of their sins as 
if it were a feather in their cap. And I know a woman 
who never sings more merrily at her washtub than 
when she has set a whole class-meeting groaning and 
praying over her " fall from grace." 

It only needs a certain degree of self-confidence, 
self-conceit, and coarseness, to enable anybody to 
"speak" to anybody. What w^e need is not en- 
couragement to prey upon our neighbor's privacy, but 



256 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

warning to respect it. Young people need far less aid 
in laying their personal responsibility upon others, and 
refusing to be upright, except upon the church's soli- 
citation, than in learning the meaning and dignity of 
silence, and the profound reverence, which, under all 
circumstances, and on every occasion, should be paid 
to the living soul. 



THE LAND OF BEOKEN PKOIISE. 




THE LAND OF BROKEN PROMISE. 

JHE reverend and venerable Dr. Woolsey, late 
president of Yale College, publicly expresses 
his dismay at our national plight, and our 
especial need of hope, " aside from personal consider- 
ations, when the affairs of the country are conducted 
with so little wisdom, and when political corruption 
seems to be becoming more and more rampant/' 

Mr. James Russell Lowell is made so uncomfortable 
by reading American newspapers abroad, that he in- 
troduces into a solemn and stately elegiac poem upon 
Agassiz the teacher, his deep disgust with the country 
of his birth and of Agassiz's adoption. This song 
sings he from over the sea : — 

" The festering news we half despise, 
Yet scramble for, no less, 
And read of public scandal, private fraud; 
Crime flaunting scot-free, while the mob applaud; 
Office made vile to bribe unworthiness; 
And aU the unwholesome mess. 
The Land of Broken Promise serves of late 
To teach the Old World how to wait" 



260 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

And, as all roads lead to Rome, "The Congregation- 
alist," one of the oldest, ablest, and most influential 
religious newspapers in the country, deduces from the 
Mill River disaster the rather remarkable moral reflec- 
tion, that our own community, and our whole nation, 
should u be admonished by it of a danger in which we 
are, from the great volume of political corruption 
reservoired at Washington, which ever and anon gives 
warning of its dangerous power, and which at any 
moment may deluge the broad land with distress. 
Charles Reade's attempted remedy was to ' blow up 
the waste- weir.' If something could be seasonably 
blown up at the capital, there might be less danger to 
the land." 

The affairs of this Land of Broken Promise are con- 
ducted by — or we may say, "the reservoir of political 
corruption at Washington" is divided into — three 
departments, — the executive, the judicial, and the 
legislative. The President, the head of the Executive 
Department, is a regularly educated man, a graduate 
of West Point. The Vice-President is not a graduate, 
but is a member of an evangelical church in good 
and regular standing. Of the seven members of the 
cabinet, the advisory council of the Executive, at least 
five have a college education. Of the nine judges 
of the Supreme Court, I assume (what I do not know) 
that all are graduates of colleges. Of three hundred 



THE LAND OF BROKEN PROMISE. 261 

and forty-eight members of the present Congress, 
one hundred and seventy are recorded as having re- 
ceived a college-education, most of them being gradu- 
ates. A very large majority of the remaining one 
hundred and seventy-eight — so large, that we may 
say all, with a few exceptions — have received an aca- 
demic education. The ratio of liberally educated, and 
even of college educated, men in the National Govern- 
ment, is, therefore, overwhelmingly larger than that out- 
side of government. It is safe to assume (and, if I am 
wrong, I can easily be proved wrong by exact sta- 
tistics) , that of the eight millions of adult men, who, 
according to the ordinary rule of ratio, may be reck- 
oned citizens of the United States, not more than fifty 
thousand are college graduates. Of the Executive De- 
partment, then, two-thirds are college graduates. Of 
the Judicial Departments, all are college graduates. 
Of the Legislative Department, nearly, if not quite, 
one-half are college-bred, and nearly all have an aca- 
demic training ; while, outside of Congress, the college- 
men are only one in one hundred and sixty of the 
whole male adult population. When we reflect, that, 
almost universally, the colleges and academies of the 
country — if not dedicated definitely and formally, like 
Harvard University, to Christ and the Church — were 
yet founded in the interests of religion as truly as 
of science, by devout and learned men, we see that 



262 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

government is not made up of the scum and dregs of 
our country, nor even of its average "sweetness 
and light ; " but it is the outcome of our churches and 
colleges, the product of what is considered to be our 
highest intelligence and virtue. If, then, the average 
wisdom and honesty of the government be less than 
those of the outside world, it certainly leads to the sup- 
position, that church and college train to weakness and 
wickedness, and not to purity and strength. It would 
seem that the fountains of political corruption are to be 
found in our nurseries of religion and learning. Nor, I 
trust, will it be deemed impertinent for me to suggest 
to college faculties and other clergy, that though 
standing afar off, and "blowing up something" at 
Washington, is a favorite and an easy method of 
political reformation, it may not really be the most 
thorough, rational, and effective. When our schools and 
academies, our colleges and churches, have so remod- 
elled their modes of study and their moral influence as 
to become potent for good rather than for evil ; when 
they can contribute to the government men stronger 
against temptation, nobler in the adoption of ends, and 
wiser in the pursuit of means, than are reared outside 
of college-walls, — then may we look for political re- 
generation. But so long as the body-politic outside of 
government — of which the very offscouring of the earth 
is a large component part, and into which comes 



THE LAND OF BROKEN PROMISE. 263 

liberal education in a severely diminished ratio — is a 
comparatively virtuous and pure body, and the body 
called government — though almost entirely free from 
the low element characterized as the " dangerous 
classes," and composed largely of the very flower of 
civilization and Christianity — is so filthy and nau- 
seous as to be a "reservoir of political corruption," 
from whose defilement the purer outside world should 
be defended, it must be agreed that our science and 
our Christianity are both failures, and that the most 
urgent need of the day is a radical reform in our insti- 
tutions of learning and religion. 

I speak as a fool, "yet as a fool receive me." 
My acquaintance with colleges is limited; yet such 
straws as I have seen fluttering harmonize with the 
above recorded facts in marking the direction of the 
wind. When a young man of cultivated and honored 
ancestry, having reached his twentieth year not only 
without reproach, but with signal honor, becomes a 
member of that university of which Prof. James Russell 
Lowell is so distinguished an ornament, to be, in his 
senior year, expelled with his fair young name tar- 
nished, and his future marred ; when, in the same 
university, a young man attends recitation every day, 
and is summoned to recite only once in four weeks ; 
when a man whose European reputation is wider even 
than that of Mr. James Russell Lowell declares that 



264 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

the headquarters of Harvard College are in the Parker 
House bar-room, and all the Harvard world applauds 
the " hit ; " when an express-box brought to a student's 
door suggests u wine" to the first passer-by; when 
that member of the cabinet who has been most de- 
nounced for incapacity, not to say imbecility, for 
connivance at fraud, not to say fraud, for insignifi- 
cance, not to say imperceptibility (I am not now pre- 
suming to give an opinion of my own, but am merely 
stating the case as our journals give it), when this 
secretary is a graduate with honors from Harvard 
University, — I cannot help suspecting that no incon- 
siderable part of the "unwholesome mess" which 
disturbed the digestion of Prof. James Russell Lowell 
was cooked at the university with which his name is 
indissolubly connected. When I hear the president 
of that college which Dr. Woolsey for many years 
distinguished by his fame, and nurtured with his coun- 
sels, characterizing an assemblage of twenty or thirty 
of his own students as " a drunken crowd ; " when its 
attempts at discipline are so clumsy, that a New York 
newspaper, prominent for courtesy and calm compre- 
hensiveness, and wholly friendly to the college, rebukes 
it for inflicting " most arbitrary and excessively unjust 
punishment for questionable offence," — I cannot think 
that the " little wisdom " of the National Government 
is the nearest target for Dr. Woolsey' s arrows. When 



THE LAND OF BROKEN PROMISE. 265 

the secret society of a college carries its brutal and 
bacchanal initiation orgies to the cruel death of the 
student to be initiated ; when the servile and stupid 
custom of hazing has been allowed to take such root 
in our colleges, that the effort to extirpate it is heard 
from Michigan to Maine ; when resistance to constituted 
authority goes to the length of a secession of two whole 
classes ; and the relation between teacher and taught, 
even in our most prominent colleges, is publicly, and 
without contradiction, characterized as " a system of 
mere arbitrary and irresponsible power on the one 
hand, and, of course, of antagonism, and often rebel- 
lion, on the other," — I cannot admit that the National 
Government is par excellence the corporate bod}' which 
stands in need of more wisdom, and demands the 
greatest help from hope. It is not unnatural that 
college officers, with all their traditions and habits of 
absolute sovereignty, should be impatient at the slow 
and halting steps of a government hampered by con- 
stitutional law and the rights of the individual ; but, 
apart from the fact that our National Government has 
not the power to compel all men — even in its own 
employ or its own constituency — to be virtuous, the 
success of the colleges in compelling their own students 
to virtue has not been so brilliant as to make any large 
portion of our countrymen desirous to change, with 
all its drawbacks, the national for the collegiate form 
of government. 23 



266 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

It cannot be supposed that Mr. James Russell 
Lowell, writing from a far, foreign country, and loving 
his own with the idealization which absence and 
distance always lend, could formally and publicly 
brand her with a name of dishonor, without an over- 
powering cause, as well as the bitterest pain. 

What was that cause? What does Mr. Lowell 
mean when he names the United States u The Land of 
Broken Promise " ? What promise has our country 
made, and what has she failed to keep, that she should 
be signalized above all nations as the land of broken 
promise? Her Declaration of Independence and her 
Constitution are the formal statement of her faith and 
practice, and the standard by which she should be 
judged. Has she been false to the one or to the 
other ? Has she failed to maintain her independence ? 
Has she faltered in her efforts to secure to her people 
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or to derive 
the power of her government from the consent of the 
governed? Has she been careless to form a perfect 
union, to establish justice, to insure domestic tranquil- 
lity, to provide for the common defence, to promote 
the general welfare, to secure the blessings of liberty? 
Has she been reckless of the Constitution expressly 
framed for the furtherance of these ends? It is not 
simply that she fought eight years to maintain her 
independence, and four years to uphold her Constitu- 



TEE LAND OF BROKEN PROMISE. 267 

tion (at what a cost of blood, none knows better than 
Mr. Lowell) : it is that she has been so successful in 
securing independence, she prizes so highly the free- 
dom she has won, that her pride and exultation have 
become proverbial, — a theme for the ga}^ banter of her 
friends, the malignant caricature of her foes. It is 
that her Constitution is so fixed in the regard of the 
people, that it forms the ultimate appeal of the bitterest 
partisan of all parties. The one unpardonable sin of 
the political world, which is not to be so much as 
named among us, is violation of the Constitution. 
What other promise has America made to the world 
than individual liberty and constitutional government 
of the people by the people ? 

Or is it not the government, but the individuals 
who compose the nation, w r ho give the nation its bad 
pre-eminence ? But when have we even promised to 
secure universal personal perfection? When and 
where did this country take out a patent for private 
individual regeneration? Nowhere but in the brains 
of theorists. The men who founded, and the men who 
sustain, this nation, know well that it is not a form of 
government which moulds character, but character 
which shapes the form of government. They were 
never so foolish as to suppose that human depravity 
would die out in the purest republic : on the contrary, 
they assume, in the strongest manner, its indefinite 



268 SERMONS TO TEE CLERGY. 

existence by making laws to restrain and diminish it. 
Undoubtedly they believed that what was peculiar in 
their institutions w r ould not minister to vice ; that in 
the greater happiness, freedom, and prosperity which 
they wished to secure, there would be less temptation 
to, less commission of crime. Were they wrong? Is 
private character less honorable here than in the Old 
World ? Is the standard of truth and honesty lower ? 
Is the word of a gentleman less binding? Is there 
less pa}'ment of debt, more trickery in trade, more 
cheating of servants, less chastity, less charity, less 
courtesy to women, less consideration for a neighbor? 
On the contrary, do not our higher and our lower 
classes compare favorably with those of any other 
country? Is an American less trusted in the shops of 
Europe than a Russian? Is an English gentleman 
more courteous, is an Italian peasant more comfort- 
able, is a Prussian mechanic more free, is a French 
tradesman more honest, is a Spanish laborer more 
intelligent, than his American comrade? 

" Crime flaunting scot-free while the mob applauds." 

What crime flaunts scot-free ? and what mob applauds ? 
Is it murder? is it theft? is it drunkenness? On the 
contrary, this Land of Broken Promise serves of late 
nothing more noticeable than a fixed, resolute deter- 
mination to ferret out and annihilate all malefeasance 



THE LAND OF BROKEN PROMISE. 269 

in office, all breach of trust. No "public scandal" 
has made part of Mr. Lowell's u festering news," but 
in connection with, and often in consequence of, an 
effort to remove it. The great wickedness of Mr. 
Tweed and the New York Ring was successful only 
so long as it was secret. It flaunted only to fall. No 
sooner was it set forth to the world than a universal 
rage tore down upon it, and scattered its perpetrators 
to prison and to exile. In a sort of renaissance of 
virtue, our zeal has sometimes outrun our discretion. 
We have pushed " investigation ' • sometimes to an 
absurd and injurious limit, and to the distress and 
serious detriment of men who were not only innocent, 
but who would have been considered innocent by a 
more dispassionate survey. Through mere good- 
nature, weak, perhaps, and harmful, but not unmanly, 
offence has been condoned, but never applauded. 
Criminals have been, through mercy, let off lightly; 
but their crime has not been flaunted. So strong is 
the determination to put down fraud, that our censure 
is often too swift and sweeping. We denounce with 
too little discrimination. It is because the conscience 
of the country is so almost morbidly keen and alert, 
that Mr. Lowell is troubled by " festering news." A 
single English railway pays regularly every year, 
without a ripple on the surface of English society, 
seventy-five thousand pounds sterling to the English 

23* 



270 SERMONS TO TEE CLERGY. 

parliament for precisely such service as a few con- 
gressmen were suspected of having been, for a single 
session, urged to render in the Credit Mobilier affair, 
and the mere suspicion of which rocked the whole 
country with alarm and indignation, and no doubt 
hastened, if it did not cause, the death of two men 
most prominently concerned. 

Or may it be that our non-resumption of specie 
payment constitutes us the Land of Broken Promise? 
But are we alone in resorting to notes of credit in 
order to sustain the burden of a prolonged and costly 
war? Is it not the common mode of distributing the 
expense? What great nation has ever carried on a 
great war without it? And, if so, may we not have 
adopted the general course, not from signal and 
degraded love of cheating, but because there appears 
to be some inherent wisdom or necessity in the way 
itself ? The United States did in this precisely what 
England did for twenty-three years during and after 
the Napoleonic wars, — she had a paper currency not 
redeemed in gold. England, indeed, went one great 
step beyond our government, for she made her people 
take the notes of the Bank of England ; whereas our 
people have been asked only to take their own prom- 
ises to pay. But, whenever and wherever the United 
States has agreed to pay gold, gold she has paid. 
The old debts, maturing when our civil war was 



THE LAND OF BROKEN PROMISE. 271 

flagrant, and gold at an enormous premium, were 
paid at a fearful cost and sacrifice by our govern- 
ment ; but paid they were, in solid coin, to the utter- 
most farthing. In whose eyes does our Punic faith 
make us the Land of Broken Promise ? Not in those 
of our own people ; for during the sudden and severe 
panic of 1873, when great houses went down, and no 
house seemed firm, the nation's notes were in as 
great demand, and of as sound value, as gold in other 
panics. Not in the eyes of foreign financiers ; for our 
bonds abroad stand to-day higher than those of any 
European nation, England alone excepted ; and this 
in the markets of Europe. Our hundreds of millions 
of Fives sold by the famous syndicate, brought par in 
coin ; while the French Fives, on the market at the 
same time, were sold at a very considerable discount. 
It has, moreover, been currently and confidently re- 
ported in the treasury circles of Washington, that 
Secretary Bristow had the most flattering offers for 
funding the entire amount of United States Sixes as 
low, possibly, as four and a half, certainty as low as 
five, — offers, let it be remembered, from the bankers 
of Europe. How is it that the Land of Broken Prom- 
ise maintains this high credit by that most sensitive of 
all tests, the purse? How is it, that, if our promises 
be lies, the people at home and abroad seem wholly 
given over to believe the lie? How is it that the 



272 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

bankers of Europe repose the most absolute confidence 
in our integrity, while an American poet goes abroad 
to hold his country up to contumely ? 

I offer no opinion whatever as to the right or the 
wrong of specie basis, or legal tender, or any mone- 
tary measure whatever. It may be that we could 
have waged our war without paper. It is easy now to 
say it, and perhaps not easy to disprove it, and per- 
haps not possible to prove it. At the time, we thought 
we could not. It may be that we ought to have dis- 
pensed with paper credit before this. I leave these 
matters entirely untouched ; but what I do maintain is, 
that there is nothing to indicate that the nation intends 
to forswear her plighted faith, or that any large number 
of men, either at home or abroad, have a lively fear that 
she will do so. Repudiation did but stir, and she was 
beaten down. There is a question of ways and means. 
It may be that a country so wide, with interests so 
diverse, can arrive at a wise and harmonious conclu- 
sion on a question of so vital import, only with infinite 
debate and delay. It is not enough that a course be 
right and proper : it must be seen to be right and 
proper east and west, north and south, by the igno- 
rant and the intelligent, by the freedman and the free- 
born. We have never promised the world, or ourselves, 
to be over-wise in finance ; nor do we imagine that 
wisdom will die with us. We must learn, as other 



THE LAND OF BROKEN PROMISE. 215 

nations learn, truth by experience. They are but 
dreamers who imagine that any form of government 
can open a royal road to virtue, fame, or fortune. 

Did Agassiz, that Agassiz whose loss Mr. Lowell 
so tenderly deplores in the same breath in which he 
stigmatizes the country that welcomed and adopted 
him, — did Agassiz find it a Land of Broken Promise ? 
From the day on which he came, a stranger, to her 
shores, till the day on which he lay dead, a well- 
beloved son, did she fail his hope? Did she refuse 
him any opportunity, begrudge him any means, deny 
him any honor ? 

Charles Dickens, inoculated with what venom I do 
not know, could write of " that republic but yesterday 
let loose upon her noble course, and but to-day so 
maimed and lame, so full of sores and ulcers, foul to 
the eye, and almost hopeless to the sense, that her best 
friends turn from the loathsome creature in disgust.' ' 
But, if she be indeed in such evil case, it would seem 
more decorous for her own sons not to enshrine her 
shame in monumental verse, but rather 

"Pay the reverence of old days 
To that dead f arne, 
Walk backward with averted gaze, 
And hide the shame." 

In the midst of the crimination and recrimination, 
the accusations and investigations, the proved guilt 



?n4 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

and the uncontradicted slander with which our news- 
papers abound, it is not strange that uneducated men, 
whose knowledge of history is derived chiefly from 
newspapers, whose acquaintance with the experience 
of other peoples and other ages is but vague and 
slight, should view the situation with dismay, should 
feel that we have fallen on evil days, should fear that 
" political corruption is becoming more and more 
rampant." 

But it is surprising to see educated people doing 
precisely the same thing. What is culture for, if it be 
not to enable its possessor to make intelligent compari- 
sons ? What is the good of an acquaintance with the 
past, if it be not to give us a more accurate judgment 
of the present? The average length of life is said to 
be about forty years. Looking at this fact alone, and 
seeing that man is made capable of living comfortably 
for seventy years, we might despair of the future, and 
say that his ignorance and recklessness had already 
reduced his span from seventy to forty years, and set 
the race on the sure road to annihilation. But, when a 
survey of the past has informed us that of old time the 
average length of life was thirty years, we see that our 
course is really in a different direction ; and our jeremiad 
should be a paean that science and virtue have already 
added ten years to the life of man. 

Why do not our sages, instead of joining the mob, 



THE LAND OF BROKEN PROMISE. 275 

and reviling the present for vices and errors which are 
patent to all, and even for processes which are neither 
errors nor vices, — why do the} r not bring out of their 
treasury things old as well as new, and increase the 
value of popular criticism by making it intelligent? 
The mechanic and day-laborer cannot be expected to 
know ; but the professor and the clergyman surely 
ought to know and teach that societ3 r has improved, 
and not deteriorated, since the early days of the 
republic. It is less gross, less animal, more pure and 
elevated ; and in this elevation public and political life 
has shared. What was tolerated then would now con- 
sign men to infamy. Charges of corruption were as 
fierce then as now ; but many things which would now 
be condemned as dishonest were then considered but 
a part of the " regular routine,' ' and have lost character 
only as the atmosphere has become clearer, the national 
and private conscience more sensitive. 

The fact, also, that the names which we now hold in 
highest honor were most sweepingly traduced in their 
own daj', ought, it would seem, to teach our learned 
men to make allowance for the recklessness of eager 
and irresponsible persons, whose interest it is to 
startle. The same shafts of corruption, intrigue, and 
selfishness that are levelled at the sons were levelled at 
the fathers. The country was in the same danger then 
as now of being betrayed and dishonored by the ignor- 



276 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

ant and unprincipled men who were managing the 
government. So long ago as March 10, 1779, the 
disheartened editor declared that ' i universal despond- 
ency seemed to spread itself through every class of 
men that were led to reflect either upon the weight of 
domestic calamity or the political derangement of the 
government." 

While Washington was yet alive, there were not 
wanting those who declared that he had slept away his 
time in the field till the finances of the country were 
completely exhausted ; that John Adams was always a 
speller after places and offices, that he never contem- 
plated the origin of government, or comprehended any 
thing of first principles ; that John Jay was always 
the sycophant of every thing in power ; and that the 
Federalists were but dignified traitors. " The charac- 
ter which Mr. Washington has attempted to act in the 
world is a sort of non-describable, chameleon -colored 
thing called c prudence.' It is, in many respects, a 
substitute for principle ; and it is so nearly allied to 
hypocrisy that it easily slides into it." The treaty 
which this imbecile administration made with France 
had nothing to boast of but the poltroon's right to let 
another kick him. It was the pusillanimity of the 
Washington faction that brought upon America the 
loss of character she suffered in the world. The wan- 
ton profligacy of John Adams and his friends made 



THE LAND OF BROKEN PROMISE. 277 

him seem like a debauched libertine, whom a rich and 
virtuous woman had selected for her husband, spend- 
ing all she was worth, and getting into debt everyday. 
Parson Eead of Massa husetts is accused of getting 
six dollars a day in Congress, and paying half a dollar 
to a young sprig of divinity for every sermon preached 
for the old parson while at Congress. The last day 
of Washington's administration was hailed with delight 
as the beginning of an era in whLh his name should 
cease to give a currency to political iniquit3 r , and to 
legalize corruption. Had a fastidious gentleman been 
living in Paris in 1777 and 1778, his ears would have 
been as much offended by ' ' festering news ' ' of that 
mischievous and intriguing commission of which Ben- 
jamin Franklin was at the head as they have been by 
any public scandal or private fraud in this year of 
grace 1875. 

It was Mr. Arthur Lee who found fault, and it was 
Benjamin Franklin with whom the fault was found, in 
our negotiations with France. "It is impossible to 
describe to you," writes this pure, this patriotic, this 
incorruptible man, "to what a degree this kind of 
intrigue has disgraced, confounded, and injured our 
affairs here. The observation of this at headquarters 
has encouraged and produced throughout the whole a 
spirit of neglect, abuse, plunder, and intrigue in the 
public business, which it has been impossible for me to 

24 



278 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

prevent or correct. ... I see in every department 
neglect, dissipation, and private schemes." And in 
almost every distinguished man who was prominent in 
aiding our cause in France, the pure, sharp, argus eyes 
of Mr. Arthur Lee saw only a greed of gold, an un- 
scrupulous and dishonest plot to amass wealth for 
himself. 

In 1790 there were not wanting remonstrants against 
this over-censoriousness. Says one, June 9, 1790, — 

"I wish the Americans were more attentive to their duty* 
Not only numerous complaints are uttered against the measures 
of Congress, but evil surmisings and predictions. One predicts 
they will consume a long session, and disagree at last about the 
mode of doing the business. ... A third apprehends it is not 
their intention to establish public credit, but to waste one session 
after another rn speculations and intrigues for their private ad- 
vantage. How irrational is all this ! Ask any one of these 
complainers and surmisers, if he would act so unwittingly and 
inconsistent a part, were he in Congress. He will confidently 
answer, No ! , . . More time having been spent in national 
arrangements, and forming a system for the establishment of 
public credit than some expected, they are ready to draw the 
worst conclusions, suppose our representatives will quarrel like 
children, and part without accomplishing their business. Let us 
honor ourselves too much to believe it possible that we can be so 
deceived in the men to whom we have committed the honor and 
happiness of our country." 

Would not this gentle rebuke apply equally well 
to-day? The complaints are the same. The long 



THE LAND OF BROKEN PROMISE, 279 

sessions of Congress, the failure to agree, private 
greed instead of public spirit, prolonged debate re- 
garding the establishment of national credit : they are 
the same sounds with which our ears are so familiar. 
We have been harping on my daughter, and still she 
lives. We have not unsealed an El Dorado, whose 
waters have power to quench disease, and give im- 
mortal youth. We have not established an Utopia, 
where all men's good is each man's rule. We have 
not reconstructed the human heart, and produced a 
race without sinful tendencies. We have not levelled 
the partition-wall between rich and poor, or caused that 
one star should not differ from another star in glory. 
But we have secured a greater degree of personal lib- 
ert} 7 and self-government than the world has hitherto 
seen in a republic of vaster proportions, and with 
strength proven by resistance of the severest shocks. 
Our working-classes, the rank and file of a nation, 
suffer less from the misery of poverty, have an intelli- 
gence more widely diffused, and a greater command of 
the decencies, the comforts, and the refinements of life, 
than those of any other country. We are far behind 
the optimist's faith ; but we are, also, far ahead of the 
pessimist's fear. The Old World, which has not largely 
dealt in an absolutely free criticism of the governor 
by the governed, may be a little misled by seeing our 
secret sins set forth with an almost exaggerated frank- 



280 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

ness in the columns of the newspapers. But, surely, 
Americans who have been familiar from their youth 
up with a freedom of the press which often lapses into 
license, and which is subject to scarce any other than 
the natural laws of repression and re-action, they, cer- 
tainly, ought not to be deceived by any abandonment 
of self-accusation. One might just as reasonably 
charge the clergy with crime and corruption, because 
Henry Martyn and David ,Brainerd indulged in a fervor 
of self-abasement. Mr. Martyn and Mr. Brainerd, 
and a great cloud of newspaper witnesses, use lan- 
guage which strictly belongs only to an estate of 
great sin and misery ; but probably none would be 
more surprised than themselves to find that this lan- 
guage was not apprehended in a Pickwickian sense. 
If our literary and learned men would give themselves 
to teaching us the accurate use of words, the awful 
force of language, the natural affinities of thought and 
terms, the wickedness of divorcing an idea from its 
expression, of filling a w r ord with a meaning that does 
not belong to it, of transforming a suspicion into a 
fact, a conjecture into an assertion, an incident into an 
event, an accident into a trait, gossip into history, — 
they would do a good service to the cause of truth, of 
patriotism, and of morality, for which we should all 
have reason to be grateful. 

One of the greatest safeguards of popular government 



THE LAND OF BROKEN PROMISE. 281 

is popular criticism ; and popular criticism is valuable 
in proportion as it is discriminating, intelligent, and 
just, not in proportion as it is censorious or laudatory. 
No easier way of being patriotic offers itself than to 
decry the methods, motives, and acts of those who are 
conducting the affairs of the country. There is, and 
there always will be, sufficient material for censure ; 
but ill-directed censure, general denunciation, indefinite 
sneers, are of very little use in reforming. If the object 
of censure be not to exhibit one's own superior stand- 
ard, but to improve and purify, it should be pointed, 
accurate, and sure. At the basis of all sound and 
useful criticism is knowledge. Some knowledge is 
hard to be got at, and some would seem to be easy of 
access ; yet much resounding censure is apparently 
founded on an entire absence of both kinds. 

With every recurring close of the sessions of Con- 
gress, the custodian of public virtue is shocked by 
the accumulated legislation of the few last weeks of 
Congress. All the early weeks, he severely declares, 
are wasted in useless debate ; and all the real work is 
crammed into the closing portion. It is the hot 
weather, it is the approaching adjournment, which 
makes members sensible. They dawdle at the begin- 
ning, and in the end rush bills through with reckless 
haste. 

But an observer who looks at things themselves, 

24* 



282 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

and not at the mere rumor and surface of tilings, 
would see that a great part of the work of legislation 
is done in committee. Not in the great halls of the 
house or the senate, but in the small committee- 
rooms, bills are matured. Each bill is there discussed 
by a few men selected to represent the opinion of the 
whole bocty, — selected by election in the senate, by 
appointment of the speaker in the house. Yet the 
speaker is bound in his appointments to represent not 
his own opinions, but the opinions of the house. 
These committees have each its own room, where bills 
are discussed with entire freedom, and often at great 
length. It naturally happens that the bulk of these 
bills are ready to be reported at about the same time. 
When the bills are matured for presentation, Congress 
can appoint a time for adjournment. That is, the 
pressure of business does not come because adjournment 
is fixed ; but adjournment can be fixed because business 
is now all ready to press. During the early weeks of 
the session, the fifty committees were laboring in their 
committee-rooms to reconcile opposing opinions and 
clashing interests, and present measures which should 
be likely to receive the assent of the whole body. 
During the later weeks of the session, the same fifty 
committees are striving to bring forward the various 
bills, one after another, in as rapid succession as may 
be. Is it strictly intelligent to say that the processes 



THE LAND OF BROKEN PROMISE. 283 

are useless, the results alone are work? Many bills 
are of such a character as not to enlist universal 
interest. Many men trust in these matters to the 
judgment and honor of the committee that has them 
in charge, or to the vote of other well-known men ; 
and these bills pass without debate, that is, are 
" rushed through." Sometimes this confidence is 
misplaced : a bad bill is passed, and mischievous legis- 
lation is the result. But, in a vast majority of cases, 
confidence is not misplaced. Of this vast majority 
we hear nothing; but the mischievous bill that slips 
through makes a great outcry, as is natural and 
proper : and this is the safeguard. This occasional 
passage of a bad bill is a reason why people should 
be vigilant : it is not a reason w^hy they should be 
despondent, least of all why they should be denuncia- 
tory of our institutions. In any case, it is simply 
impossible that one man should be able to acquaint 
himself thoroughly, by personal investigation, with 
the merits of every bill brought forward. The ambi- 
tion to do it is worse than idle. The man who under- 
takes to know every thing in Congress is good for 
nothing, — a failure and a nuisance. The most valu- 
able members are those who have a specialty, and 
are authority on that point. It is on this principle 
that business is conducted, and fame acquired, in the 
English house of commons. More and more, as our 



284 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

country increases, will congressional business be done 
in committee. That way, danger lies. Danger lies, 
also, in the direction of too much legislation. It 
behooves all good citizens to be on the alert. But 
it behooves them, also, to sight their game before they 
fire. Random shooting may startle ; but it is likely to 
do quite as much harm as good. Probably there is 
about as much censurable delay of business from the 
earlier to the later weeks of the session as there is a 
censurable delay of sermons from the earlier to the 
later hours of the week. 

Much debate is characterized as useless on question- 
able grounds. What is a mere truism to the compre- 
hension of the critic may be matter of doubt to the 
inferior intellect of the congressman, and even of his 
constituent. It is not enough for the " hard money" 
man to know that a specie basis is best : he must get 
the " paper money " man to believe it also. It is not 
enough for the Granger to know that the cost of 
transportation is too high : he must put the railroad 
man under conviction of sin. Whatever is of broad 
and vital interest is not likely to be passed in the 
house without prolonged and even heated debate, no 
matter how closely it may have been discussed in 
committee. Religious papers may well quarrel with 
Congress here. They " know a trick worth two" 
of these national debates. A minister preaches a 



THE LAND OF BROKEN PROMISE. 285 

sermon through, and lets no clog bark. We may 
think he has left out a fact or two in his argument on 
the atonement ; that there is a flaw in his reasoning 
on original sin, a cloud in his definition of the 
doctrine of substitution ; but the good minister has 
put us under such training, that we dare not open our 
lips, and he has it all his own way. How long would 
a sermon last, if, every time the Congregational, Evan- 
gelical preacher struck a snag, Brother Gharles K. 
Whipple, and Brother Voysey, and Brother Bishop 
Potter, and Brother Fulton, and Brother Abbott, and 
Brother Patton should rise and say, " Will the gentle- 
man allow me to ask a single question? " " Will the 
gentleman permit me to interrupt him a moment? " 
" Will the gentleman grant me a few minutes of his 
time to correct a statement of fact?" "Will the 
gentleman kindly repeat his last assertion ?" — if, in 
short, he were surrounded b} T eager antagonists ready 
to claw and clutch at every lapse from logic, and every 
weak statement or forced inference ? Let me not be 
arraigned for a mover of sedition ; but I sometimes 
think when I hear, as I sometimes do hear, a good 
man plodding serenely onward in the pulpit, assuming 
his premises, begging his questions, confounding his 
terms, mistaking assertions for conclusions, and 
upsetting his dish generally, that it might not be 
wholly insalubrious to have a little "useless debate" 



286 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

introduced into the churches. When I read in the 
Confession of Faith of the Presbyterian Church, that 
" elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated and 
saved b} r Christ, . . . others, not elected, . . . 
never truly come to Christ, and therefore cannot be 
saved," I think I should like to see that poor little 
non-elect infant run the gauntlet of the debate in the 
house of representatives. 

The reservoir of political corruption at Washington, 
built out of the ruins of the Williamsburg flood, is an 
illustration of the directness and logic of our censure. 
All investigation points to bad work, ill faith, as the 
cause of that disaster. The dam was not built accord- 
ing to specifications ; and the specifications themselves 
fell below the safety mark. The foundation-wall 
should have been laid three feet below the surface, and 
it was laid on the surface. It was not properly secured 
at the ends, and was not thick enough anywhere. The 
moral that sticks up everywhere out of the wreck is a 
reform in home-manufactures, the necessit}^ of more 
scientific, conscientious, thorough work. If any politi- 
cal moral be deducible, it is, How can we expect 
honesty in our representatives, when our own citizens, 
the solid men of Massachusetts, church-members and 
property-holders, are so corrupt and reckless, that, to 
save a few hundreds of dollars to their own pockets, 
they will wreck millions of their neighbors', destroy 



THE LAND OF BROKEN PROMISE. 287 

scores of human lives, and spread desolation through 
hundreds of homes? 

Instead of which, Massachusetts — the dear old sly- 
boots — turns her Mill River on to Washington, where 
its pure water becomes " a great volume of political 
corruption, which at any moment may deluge the broad 
land with distress," but which, we must infer, if kept 
well dammed up, and only let out as it is wanted, is a 
legitimate source of wealth and power. However, let 
us not miss airy opportunity of ' ' letting drive ' ' at 
Washington. Where there is a will there is a way ; 
and he who supposes that w r ay is to be blocked up 
by any thing so trivial as a flimsy Massachusetts 
dam has little idea of the fervor of our patriotism. 

Another moral drawn from the same disaster is the 
1 ' sure consequences of the American habit of shiftless- 
ness, of running for luck, of trusting that the bridge 
will stand for this strain." But why American? Is 
America the only country whose dams give way? In 
March, 1864, the dam of the reservoir near Sheffield, 
in England, was broken down ; and a body of water 
covering seventy-six acres of ground rushed down the 
gorge of the hills, and swept away two hundred and 
fifty human beings and a vast amount of property. 
In 1802 a dam gave way in Spain ; and six hundred 
• and eight people were drowned. 



288 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

Remembering Mr. Plimsoll, shall we not believe that 
ignorance and recklessness and total depravity are 
traits of human rather than American, or English, or 
Spanish nature? 

" Peccavimus, but rave not thus." 



MISSIONARY MUSINGS. 




MISSIONARY MUSINGS. 

|HE idea is somewhat prevalent, that, while 
our own churches must have ability, a good 
disposition is the one thing needful in a 
missionary. We want the first choice ourselves. 
What is left is good enough for the heathen. But this 
notion has been supposed to be confined to the un- 
learned and unthinking. He who has an adequate 
idea of the magnitude of the work undertaken in 
christianizing the world must, apparently, admit that 
the greatest sagacity, as well as the greatest piety, is 
required in those who are to be its immediate agents. 

But it seems otherwise to the gods who preside over 
some of our missionary boards. The printed commis- 
sion used by a certain board in appointing missiona- 
ries declares that "this appointment is made on 
condition that the appointee shall agree, without reser- 
vation, to the following stipulations ; namely, — 

" 1. To become a missionary for life." 

This seems a little like a blow in the face, to begin 
with. Are missionaries, then, a separate ecclesiastical 

291 



292 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

order, or do they belong to the same guild as other 
ministers? Do the ministers of any Protestant de- 
nomination take upon themselves vows of perpetual 
obligation? If a country clergyman, after ten or 
twenty years of preaching, finds his throat giving out, 
he retires from the pulpit, and turns stock-broker. If 
he contracts a distaste for his work, or grows tired in 
or of it, or thinks he would like something else better, 
or accomplish more good in other occupations, he 
enters a newspaper office, or becomes secret afy of a 
charitable society, or commissioner of jails, or a furni- 
ture-dealer, or (such things have been known) he buys 
a snug little house, and lives on the interest of his 
money. Is there a single Protestant denomination 
that forbids it? Has the missionary an inferior rank, 
that he cannot be allowed the same liberty ? 

Probably the stipulation is made with the praise- 
worthy purpose of preventing a waste of the money of 
the churches. The minister pays his own preparatory 
expenses. The missionary is sent by the Board ; and 
it would not be economical to furnish him with an out- 
fit for a short term. But to make him serve an 
apprenticeship for life in order to defray the expense of 
one journey is rating him at a low figure. Our National 
Government sends the young man through West 
Point, and demands only an eight-years' service in 
return. Is not a missionary of more value than many 



MISSIONARY MUSINGS. 293 

cadets ? And what is the attitude of the missionary 
toward the home churches ? Is he the dependent upon 
or the almoner of their bounty ? Is he an office-seeker, 
clamorous for outfit and salary, to whom the keepers- 
at-home may say patronizingly, " Yes, we will give 
you the place you want, on condition that you * stay 
there the rest of }^our life, and never let us have to 
provide for you again," or is he a man whom the 
office seeks, whom the place craves, who earns his 
salary, who does not barter away his right of self- 
direction, who is the peer of his appointers, and may 
be presumed to have sufficient character, ambition, and 
philanthropy to know when to retire with honor? 
Gen. Schenck, Mr. Washburne, Mr. Bancroft, are 
fitted out by government, and can resign and return 
the moment they touch a foreign port if they choose. 
Have the ministers of religion less interest in their 
work, less perception of the fitness of things, less 
regard for their good name, than the minister of 
politics ? Must they be bound by an oath, lest they 
run away from their stations ? What does it say of 
missionaries and missionary work, if only a contract 
can keep them at it ? There are many offices to which 
men are appointed for life ; but I know none to which 
they are forced to adhere for life. This missionary 
board has so poor an opinion of its appointees, and 
the work which it assigns them, that it binds them to 

25* 



294 SERMONS TO TEE CLERGY. 

it by extraordinary and unusual ties, and imposes upon 
them restraints and engagements to which no class of 
ministers at home are called upon to submit, and to 
which, it may be presumed, they would not submit if 
they were called. 

The appointee agrees : — 

"3. To go out deeply imbued with the love of 
Christ and of souls ; profoundly impressed with the 
danger, the folly, and the guilt of men in heathendom ; 
fully sensible of his call from God to preach the 
gospel ; a hearty acceptance of the doctrines and 
discipline of the [apostolic] Church, and well affected 
toward its authorities ; a profound sense of his con- 
stant dependence on divine grace to qualify him for 
the great work to which he devotes himself, and fully 
determined to labor in harmony with his brethren, to 
avoid all causes of irritation, to discourage all factions 
and strifes in the mission, and all attempts to weaken 
the bonds between it and the Church at home." 

If the appointee has any "realizing sense" of 
Lindley Murray, he must go out deeply imbued with 
the grammar of the appointing power, and profoundly 
impressed with the ignorance and the folly, if not the 
guilt, of men out of heathendom. The heathen, the 
Deity, and the [apostolic] Church, autocratic bishops, 
and quarrelsome brethren, are mingled indiscriminately 
in the draught which is commended to his lips. Noth- 



MISSIONARY MUSINGS. 295 

ing human or divine is foreign to his contract. It is 
not enough that he is called upon to promise, that, at 
some future time, he will be deeply imbued with certain 
sentiments, and profoundly impressed with certain 
facts : he is required to become responsible for the 
divine Being. The Board is not content to take his 
view of the case ; but it forces him to go up into the 
heaven of heavens, and tell us the precise part which 
the Most High took in the arrangement. But can the 
divine acts be the subjects of human testimony? 
When a man sa}-s he is fully sensible of his call from 
God to preach the gospel, do we know any more about 
it than we knew before ? It was a great victory in the 
old witchcraft trials when spectral evidence was ruled 
out of court as inadmissible ; but it was no more in- 
tangible than the evidence which modern man can offer 
of God's plans and purposes. If the [apostolic] Church 
believes, with the Roman Catholic Church, that the age 
of miracles is not past, that the blood of St. Januarius 
still reddens and bubbles before the eyes of the awe- 
struck people, and the bread of the sacramental table 
becomes the body of our Lord Jesus Christ ; if God 
still appears to men in dreams and visions to reveal 
his will, — then it may be that a man becomes fully 
sensible of his call from God to preach the gospel. 
But if with the revelation to St. John the divine 
ceased the special revelation of God to man, a mis- 



296 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

sionary has no other way of being sensible of his call 
from God to preach the gospel than the dressmaker 
has of her call from God to make gowns, or the 
dentist his call from God to fill teeth. We can judge 
of what God calls us to do only from the human side : 
the missionary, like the rest of us, must use his own 
judgment in deciding where to go. Eeason tells every 
one to do the work for which his character, abilities, 
and circumstances best fit him. One man is born to 
the purple, and one to be hewer of wood, and drawer 
of water. If the purple and fine linen are trailed in 
the dust of defeat and disaster and degradation ; if 
the hewer of wood passes with swinging, steady step 
from his native forests to the forefront of battle and 
a nation's highest place, — what is it but the call of 
God ? £*od calls us through ability. How can a man 
know his ability till it is tested? Doubtless many 
a minister, and perhaps many a missionary, has 
entered conscientiously upon his work, and led a life 
of disappointment, discontent, and failure, from sim- 
ple error of choice. I have heard ministers lament, 
that, under stress of parental influence or temporary 
excitement, they adopted their profession, exerted but 
half their powers, and achieved but partial success ; 
while all their tastes led them in another direction, and 
all their faculties fitted them for another sphere : but, 
at the time the choice was made, they would have had 



MISSIONARY MUSINGS. 297 

no hesitation in avowing themselves fully sensible of 
their call from God. Really the call was from their 
parents or their emotions : their mature judgment 
could attribute it to no higher source. 

But while the Board exalts its missionaries to the 
throne of God with one hand, with the other it keeps 
the balance true by thrusting them down far below 
those who remain at home. It demands that the mis- 
sionary shall agree, fourthly, " to observe and keep 
the rules and regulations both of the Discipline and 
the Missionary Manual in their present form, or as 
they may from time to time be changed hereafter ; and 
also to be governed and guided by the general commit- 
tee and : board of managers of the Missionary Society 
of the [Infallible Apostolic] Church, and by the 
bishop having charge of the missions, giving due heed 
to the instructions and suggestions which they from 
time to time may send in regard to plans and opera- 
tions.' ' 

11 A man I know, 
But shaU not discover,' * 

is wont to terminate all discussion on female suffrage 
with the terse and intelligible declaration, "Madam, 
the end of the matter is this : we have got you down, 
and we mean to keep you down." Very much of this 
sort seems the attitude of the apostolic Church toward 



298 SERMONS TO TEE CLERGY. 

its missionary. They swear him in for life, and they 
bind him to observe and keep, not only the rules as they 
now exist, but as they may from time to time be changed 
hereafter. They do not demand from him a declara- 
tion of belief in the infallibility of the Board ; but 
they demand a promise which he ought not to give un- 
less the Board be infallible. Of actual rules he can 
form a judgment, and such he may intelligently agree 
to obey ; but a rule which is not made he cannot agree 
to keep, except by divesting himself of his manhood, 
and following a Board as blindly as the most bigoted 
Roman Catholic follows the Pope. No matter how 
preposterous a rule some subsequent revolutionary 
Board may lay down, he has bound himself beforehand 
to obey it, and has not even the alternative of resigna- 
tion. No Romanist requirement is more unreasonable 
than this. He promises : — 

"5. To refrain from making known his grievances 
in communicating with his friends, and especially in 
writing to newspapers ; to avoid calling in question, in 
any public way, the policy, plans, or spirit of the mis- 
sionary administration at home, reserving his opinions 
or complaints for the general committee, the board of 
managers, or the bishops having jurisdiction severally 
in the premises, according to the nature of the 
case." 

[Signed by the bishops.'] 



MISSIONARY MUSINGS. 299 

With a single exception, the good bishops have taken 
every available method of securing order in Warsaw. 
But they should have made the candidate agree : — 

6. Never to put his printed commission into his hat, 
and especially never to suffer the wind to blow hard 
enough to blow his hat off, and whirl his commission 
into the hands of strangers, especially the newspapers, 
and thus prevent calling in question in any public way 
the intelligence, policy, or effectiveness of the mission- 
ary administration at home. 

This wise regulation was not inserted, though it may 
be one of those future rules which he has construc- 
tively agreed to observe. We have, therefore, the 
opportunity to remark, that the objection which lies 
against this commission is, that it is founded on the 
opposite of intelligence. It appeals to ignorant and 
undiscriminating piety ; and in proportion as a man is 
wise, in proportion as he understands the meaning and 
use of words, the limits of thought and obligation, the 
freedom and dignity of the individual, he rejects it, not 
only with decision, but with scorn. In direct ratio with 
^his fitness to be a missionary is the impossibility of his 
agreeing to the condition of becoming one. 

No man, no committee of intelligence, would make it 
incumbent on anj r one to agree to support a contingent 
discipline. The first requiremf nt of reason is that the 
mind shall clearly understand the articles to which it 



300 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

subscribes. The Board demands that its servants 
shall support an unstated proposition, either from a 
lack of sufficient mental acuteness to see the absurdi- 
ty of such a thing, or from a dishonorable disposition 
to take advantage of a similar presumed lack on the 
part of the candidate. The wise man refuses to be 
thus blindly bound. It is only the unthinking who are 
caught. 

Again: when a man agrees to " report his accept- 
ance in writing to the missionary secretaries, and place 
himself under their direction as to the time of sailing, 
the mode of conveyance, and the preparation for the 
voyage," he agrees to something definite, intelligible, 
practicable. But when he agrees u to go out deeply 
imbued with the love of Christ and of souls, profoundly 
impressed with the danger, the folly, and the guilt of 
men in heathendom, fully sensible of his call from God 
to preach the gospel, and of his constant dependence 
on divine grace to qualify him for the great work," 
he agrees to he knows not what. Whose lead and line 
shall be used in fathoming his love, to tell whether it 
be deep or shallow? And suppose the party of the 
second part should at some future time affirm that the 
party of the first had violated his contract, and was 
not deeply imbued, or profoundly impressed, or fully 
sensible, how is the latter to prove or disprove it? He 
makes a contract regarding possessions which are in- 



MISSIONARY MUSINGS. 301 

tangible, immeasurable, incapable of being made the 
objects of contract. He agrees at a certain future 
time to be in a certain state of mind. The committee 
stipulates for emotions. The state of mind may be a 
very proper one, and the emotions highly becoming to 
the occasion ; but neither the understanding which re- 
quires, nor that which subscribes to, these conditions, is 
of a lofty or discriminating order. The commission is 
a medley of possibilities and impossibilities, of divine 
grace and human botch, of sentiment and steamers. 
The only pleasant feature of the whole form is the pain- 
ful, scrupulous, ever- vigilant care taken to repress 
insurrection, and secure obedience. Evidently the ven- 
erable bishops have had a hard time of it. Apparently 
the heathen have not given them half as much trouble 
as the brethren. These missionaries must be a restive 
folk. The managers have but a passing word upon the 
perils of Pagans ; but they exhaust the resources of 
ingenuity in building barricades against the machi- 
nations of the men who are conspiring to convert them. 
One word for the glory of God is followed by ten for 
that of the board of managers. It is very well for the 
missionaries and the heathen to depend upon divine 
grace ; but the bishops want it down in black and 
white. They lift one eye to the hills whence cometh 
their help ; but they keep the other on the valleys, to 
see that no unruly brother take advantage of their 

26 



302 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

devoutness to indulge in revolt against their dominion. 
In one breath, the candidate agrees that he will be 
imbued with the love of Christ ; in the next, that he 
will be well affected toward the church authorities. 
Not a religious plank is brought forward for the plat- 
form, but this belabored Board is sure to be bobbing 
behind it. Between the secretaries and the manuals, 
the general committees and board of managers, the 
bishops and other clergy, the missionary must some- 
times be hard pushed to know which king it is to 
whom he has sworn allegiance. 

And the worst of it is, that he cannot have the com- 
fort of writing home to his sweetheart about it. If the 
Board cannot prevent the formation of steam, it can, at 
least, shut down the valves, and prevent its escape. 
The Rev. Mr. Brown may grumble about the stupidity 
of Secretary Smith in sending him around the Horn, 
instead of across the Continent ; but he shall not per- 
mit his grumbling to reverberate in Isabella's epistles. 
The Board fears its missionaries even writing love- 
letters. Its model correspondent would be that la- 
conic young man, who, being commissioned to break 
gently to distant parents the tidings of their son's 
violent death, fulfilled his mission by writing : — 

"Mr. A. 

" Dear Sir, —A coyote has eaten your son's head off." 



MISSIONARY MUSINGS. 303 

In short, if we were to judge from this commission, 
we should say that the missionary force consisted of 
two parties, — the Board of Managers, which stays at 
home, and whose work is chiefly and constantly a 
fierce struggle to maintain and perpetuate its own 
supreme power ; and the missionaries proper, who go 
abroad, and whose chief industry is to distract the 
councils, neutralize the action, and destroy the authori- 
ty, of the Board. He might, also, hazard the conjec- 
ture, that, between the upper and the nether millstone, 
the heathen would be ground exceeding small. 

" Another Board appropriates a hundred dollars per child 
toward their support (the support of * the children of mission- 
aries, who have been left in this country for education, or who 

have lost their parents by death ' ). Mrs. and Mrs. 

have been appointed by the American Board to look after the 
interests of these children. But a further sum is required to 
meet their expenses; and we write these lines with the hope 
that some among our readers may be glad to assume the cost of 
boarding one child for a year or more." 

This is beggary. This makes our missionaries men- 
dicants. This is organizing a system with pauperism 
for one of its foundation-stones. 

There may be two opinions about the prudence and 
wisdom of sending men out to convert the Chinese, the 
Hindoo, the Zulus, to our faith ; there may be two 
opinions as to the wisdom of sending these men out 



304 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

solitary or in families : but there can be but one 
opinion about taking care of them and their families 
after they are sent. We, a great Christian nation, un- 
dertake to convert a great Pagan nation. We select 
men of pure character, of fair, sometimes of eminent 
abilities, and of expensive education. It is not worth 
while to talk about the sacrifices they make, partly 
because that always spoils a sacrifice, and also because 
they probably make no more than many a man makes 
in the way of business. Still it is true that their life 
forbids all hope of wealth, holds out very little pros- 
pect of fame, and does, more or less, put them outside 
the pale of the civilization whereunto they were born. 
It would seem, then, the least that could be required 
of us, that we should secure to them a salary sufficient 
for their support in comfort and respectability. If we 
are not able to do that, we are not able to found 
missions. If we are not willing to do that, we need 
all our missionaries at home. 

We raise four or five hundred thousand dollars a 
year to convert the world to Christianity. It is 
nothing to boast of. England raises about as much 
for her royal family. But, perhaps, while it very 
fairly represents the benevolence of the Church on the 
one side, it quite as fairly represents the incredulity of 
the Church on the other. If men really believed that 
the Brahmins and the Mandarins were in as imminent 



MISSIONARY MUSINGS. 305 

danger of perishing without their aid, and would be as 
directly and surely saved by their aid, as the victims 
of the Chicago fire, they would, no doubt, be as alert 
and as helpful in the one case as in the other. But 
though, with only half a million a year, it will take 
some considerable time thoroughly to christianize the 
world, it will surely not diminish that time to econo- 
mize money by degrading missionaries. That is sav- 
ing at the spigot to lose at the bung. That is bringing 
Paganism on a level with Christianity by letting Chris- 
tianity down. We should consider any parish incon- 
ceivably mean that should pay its minister so small a 
salar}*, that he should be obliged to put his children up 
at auction, to be bidden off like the town's poor. 
Ministers in America could not hold their own for a 
da} r , if they should go about in the religious news- 
papers asking people to take their children to board. 
But missionaries are but ministers, who earn their sal- 
aries as really as any ministers. The American Board 
is but the parish committee that hires them ; and the 
American public, the American Church, is the parish 
that employs and pays them. If we cannot raise 
money enough to support ten Christian families, let us 
support nine, but let us not send out ten, and keep 
them alive by working the adults, and turning out the 
children to charity. I think it is better for the 
heathen to get along with what religion they have, 



306 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY, 

and die in their sins, such as they are, and be judged 
without law, than it is for freeborn American children 
to be distrained from their parents, and brought up by 
charity. If the Chinese go to church in a joss-house, 
they do no worse than did their fathers before them ; 
but we were reared in a sturdy independence, and, 
though pulpit and people join hands to make the clergy 
into a new order of mendicant friars, we cannot 
succeed in it without serious deterioration. If it is 
our duty to send missionaries to the heathen at all, it 
is our duty to furnish them with the means of living 
comfortably. If it is best to employ missionaries with 
families, it is imperative to furnish them with means 
sufficient to support their families without appeals to 
charity. It is just as disgraceful and demoralizing for 
the children of a missionary to be hawked about the 
country in search of homes, as it would be for the chil- 
dren of Boston and Brooklyn ministers. We shall not, 
perhaps, convert the heathen ; but we need not spoil 
ourselves. 

It is not a great while ago that a missionary and his 
wife (I might as well say a missionary and her hus- 
band) were in this country for a visit. They were 
agreeable and cultivated persons ; but the lady was 
particularly piquant and pleasing. The freshness, 
simplicity, and grace of youth were combined with the 
wisdom and mellowness of maturity. They were 



MISSIONARY MUSINGS. 307 

received with great cordiality, and entertained with 
much hospitality, by the best people of the country. 
But I well remember the horror which attended the 
discovery that the lady in question was wearing a 
borrowed gown. She was visiting the great cities, 
constantly associating with silk and satin and velvet 
and fur. But said the portly and handsome D.D., 
in spotless linen and faultless broadcloth, " Why, she 
would better wear a calico dress than borrow." 

Of course, the horrors of a borrowed gown cannot be 
exaggerated. But, O mi fill! let us see you walking 
into your own pulpit in a blue farmer 's-frock, let us see 
you presiding over a conference in a flowered cotton 
wrapper, before fully accepting your dictum in this 
matter. It is very easy to tell other people to be 
brave ; but conspicuity may be more fearful than 
cannon-balls. The pity of it is, not that a missionary 
should borrow a garment, but that we, the home- 
guard, should suffer her to be reduced to the necessity 
of borrowing a garment, or going without. We send 
a woman out to the cannibal islands to lavish her youth 
and health and life on savages, while we stay at home 
and enjoy ourselves ; and, when she comes home for 
a few months' rest and refreshment, she has to borrow 
clothes in order to make a decent appearance among 
us. It is we who are heathen. We scarcely mend 
the matter by clubbing together in swift dismay, and 



308 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

providing a silk gown after the discovery is made. 
That is but a clumsy and unregenerate charit} 7 . Our 
religion ought to have taught us long ago, that a black 
silk dress should await ever}' missionary wife the 
moment she sets her foot on the wharf of her country, 
and that not as a charity, but as the least of her legal 
rights. Not one of us but would rather take a con- 
tract to supply the whole American Board with silk 
gowns than to settle down in the South Sea ourselves ; 
and, if we can compromise on a handsome outfit and 
ample support for all goers and comers, we ought to 
consider ourselves let off very lightly. 

Have we any right to be let off at all ? I suppose 
there is no question that the work does drag a little. 
The debt this year is somewhat alarming. Nor are 
those years which are free from debt altogether encour- 
aging. The treasurer's report of one such year was 
received with much gratification, and followed by a 
hearty prayer of thanksgiving; but it was a little 
startling to find, later on, that, " the sad reason why 
the debt has been reduced is, that persons enough 
could not be found to go abroad, so as to require more 
money. . . . The most pressing appeals from the 
secretaries and missionaries — the great burden of 
the meeting, indeed — were for more men and women 
to go into the white harvest-fields. It was a piteous 
cry, almost a wailing. ,, 



MISSIONARY MUSINGS. 309 

Of course, there is no inconsistency, and no impro- 
priety, in being glad you are out of debt, even though 
the reason is that you had no chance to get in. Speak- 
ing after the flesh, one would say, that, even had there 
been people wanting to go, it w^ould have been wiser 
not to send them, so long as there was no money to 
do it with. Indeed, may we not reckon it providential 
that the lack of money was so handsomely met by a 
lack of men? And, on the other hand, is it so piteous 
a thing that men do not wish to go ? In yet another 
column of the same paper, I find, " In speaking of the 
dangers which ma} 7 burst upon our brethren in China, 
at any moment, Mr. Goodrich said, ' No man ought 
to engage in the missionary work who is not willing 
to be a martyr.' As we looked over the vast assem- 
blage of noble-looking men and women who listened 
so attentively to his thrilling words, we wondered 
how it w^ould be, were all of them filled with the 
martyr's spirit. . . . We felt sure the speaker had 
faced in sober thought the possibilities of martyrdom." 

Now, I must confess, in commonplace honesty, that 
there was, at least, one of those noble-looking men and 
women who did not feel filled with the martyr spirit, 
and who did not see any reason why the rest should. 
When duty and danger front a man, he is a coward to 
shirk them ; but is it a duty to go around to the other 
side of the world to court danger ? When the Chinese 



310 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

come to our country, we ought to protect them in life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, at all costs. 
There is a clear case for the martyr spirit to have free 
course, run (forward, not backward), and be glorified. 
But to sail twelve thousand miles away from our own 
country, to thrust ourselves into a kingdom that does 
not want us, and tells us so at the cannon's mouth, 
seems to me, like swearing, 

"Neither brave, polite, nor wise." 

" Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel 
to every creature," sure enough. But, when Christ 
was sending out his first missionaries, he bade them 
expressly, not to go to China and Japan and Mi- 
cronesia, but to New York and Boston and Lowell. 
" Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any 
city of the Samaritans enter ye not. But go, rather, 
to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." If the 
heathen did not want the gospel, he did not bid his 
disciples to force it upon them : he did not bid them 
stajr, and be martyrs, but enjoined upon them to come 
away. Offer the gospel, but remember that it is for 
them to take or to leave. A man shall not be forced, 
even into the kingdom of heaven. " Whosoever shall 
not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye 
depart out of that city, shake off the dust of your feet. 
. . . When they persecute you in this city, flee ye 



MISSIONARY MUSINGS, 311 

into another." Surely, the Bible is not all martyrdom. 
There is room left for the exercise of prudence and 
reason. Can the fields be considered ripe for the 
harvest, so long as they bristle with guns? While 
broad lands are lying opposite our own doors, into 
which we may enter unopposed, and wherein we may 
work unmolested, is it necessary to traverse half the 
globe to dash our life out against the Chinese Wall ? 
The Chinese soul is worth as much to the Creator as 
the American soul ; but the American soul is also 
worth as much to the Creator as the Chinese soul ; and 
to the American nation it is worth a great deal more ; 
and is, moreover, easier to get at. If we want an 
alien race to work on, here it is, ready to our hand. 
The paper from which I have quoted says, "There 
are thirteen thousand Dakota Indians now under 
missionary influence. But, besides these, there are, 
outside and beyond the limits of our own stations, 
many thousands more, who, as a young missionary 
said, are ' as wild as any Texan cattle.' " But these 
wild Texan cattle are our own countrymen. They 
meet us at every point. It is a matter of life and 
death. And to this day we know no more what to do 
with the Indians than did Columbus. We preach to 
them a little, and we plunder them a little ; we feast 
them, and fight them ; and a good many of us have 
more faith in the fighting than in the feasting. We 



312 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

have been a Christian nation ever since we have had 
any thing to do with them ; but we have not converted 
them to any great, certainly not to any national, 
extent ; and I presume that the most sanguine expecta- 
tion we entertain concerning them, is, that thej^ will 
die out of our way. If we are so powerless for good 
to an alien race over which we have complete control, 
and to which we have, of course, free entrance, are we 
called upon to be martyrs to a race that is an inde- 
pendent power, and exercises its independence by 
shutting the door in our faces ? 

The same paper says, that, " in speaking of his late 
field of labor at Cheyenne, Col. Davis, who now goes 
as a missionary to Japan, said that town had been 
termed \ hell on wheels.' And it was a significant fact 
that women vote and hold office there ; an allusion 
which produced a broad grin and hearty laughter all 
over the house. In going there, he also remarked that 
he had in mind the story of the negro who advised his 
master to go where there was c the least pay and the 
most devil.' " 

Why, then, does he leave Che3 r enne? Why do we 
leave a "hell on wheels " in the midst of our own coun- 
try, and sail off to Japan ? Has Cheyenne been turned 
into heaven, or even into a civilized and christianized 
town on earth? Or have we there as man}' ministers, 
and as much machinery, as can be profitably employed ? 



MISSIONARY MUSINGS. 313 

"The Rev. John T. Gulick will henceforth devote 
himself to work among the Mongolians. He has found 
them a cordial, hospitable people, living under a patri- 
archal government. They are ready to welcome the 
Christian teacher. Is there any one to go with him to 
that land?" 

Why, indeed, should there be? With what face 
could we leave a " hell on wheels " driving about here, 
and set up to reform a nice, hospitable, patriarchal 
people like these Mongolians? Is it economical or 
patriotic, is it even right, to send our best men from 
home, while there is so little pay and so much devil at 
home? Among those on the platform at the meet- 
ing, says a religious paper, " certainly two were 
young pastors, who, with their wives, gladly go to the 
heathen, out of the midst of homes and parishes where 
they have been delightfully settled for two or more 
years. The Macedonian call moved them. Besides 
these, ... we met others on that platform at the 
same time, agitated and agitating the question, each 
for himself or herself, ' Am I not called to go?' " 

What is the Macedonian call ? If it is the wicked- 
ness of heathendom that draws them, here is heathen- 
dom flourishing like a green bay-tree by our own door- 
way. If it is the pastoral simplicity and winsome 
docility of the Asiatics, let us not tamper with them. 

For a few years, Japan has been sending young men 
27 



314 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

to this country and to Europe to be educated. When 
more than three hundred had been scattered through- 
out the country, the report of some of our highest 
religious observers, after four years of trial, was, — 

" The Japanese intellect, in the test which has thus been made 
of it, has proved itself bright, clear, and discriminating. . . . 

"From then first coming hither, it has been very manifest, 
that these boys have been accustomed to the ways of a truly 
polite and refined society. They are neat in appearance and 
dress, cleanly in their habits, gentle and winning in their inter- 
course with each other and with Americans. But more than this 
has been discovered as time has passed on. There is a moral 
rectitude among them which is truly surprising. There is almost 
no tendency to disorder, profligacy, and vice. 

"Among the same number of American boys of similar age, 
picked from any class of society, whether sent abroad or kept at 
home, no one could hope to find a style of conduct so truly 
exemplary. Pres. Hopkins might well say, as he did at the late 
meeting of the American Board at New Haven, that, if all which 
is said of these Japanese students be true, he could wish that 
some of them might be kept as models of conduct in our Ameri- 
can colleges. As a general fact, they are painstaking and labori- 
ous in their habits of study, keeping themselves closely to their 
books from morning till night; and it is the almost universal 
testimony in the families where they have lived, that they 
have shown themselves quiet and agreeable members of the 
household. 

"In conclusion, it may be mentioned as a remarkable fact, 
that these young men seem to be almost absolutely free from 
what may be called heathenish superstition, and are ready to re- 
ceive favorably the impressions which the Bible and our religious 
institutions are fitted to make upon them. A few have already 



MISSIONARY MUSINGS. 315 

professed Christianity, and joined Christian churches; and many 
others seem to he thoughtfully pondering upon this subject." 

Is there any thing in this report that seems to 
make it imperative upon us to listen to the call to 
martyrdom in Japan? 

We were sauntering through the pleasant streets and 
suburbs of North Adams, on a fine summer morning. 
Over against one of its little bridges stands the unpre- 
tending red brick factory where our modern Sampson 
has grappled with the problems of labor and capital, 
of supply and demand, of blood in its unity and diver- 
sity, — has wrestled, and seems thus far to have pre- 
vailed. We had, like thousands of others, walked 
through the quiet, busy house, and seen with our own 
eyes the foreign faces and the untiring, skilful hands. 
The simple American dress suits ill our ideas of Chi- 
nese dignity and luxury ; but the long black hair, 
braided and curled around the head, somewhat after 
the " Pompadour " style, was any thing but American ; 
and the short, small figures, and soft, beardless faces 
combined with the braided womanly hair to give an 
appearance of effeminacy to these celestial immigrants. 
But that they were in earnest, their unceasing work 
showed. They scarcely looked up at the approach of 
visitors ; and, if they observed us at all, their coun- 
tenances maintained a dignified and self-respectful 
unconsciousness. That they are earnest and aspiring 



316 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. - 

is seen, also, from their schoolroom, where they are 
mastering the new language and the new modes with a 
rapidity and persistence quite worth} 7 of the Caucasian 
race, while maintaining still a most tenacious love of 
fatherland, a close knowledge of its history, and a fond 
pride in its traditions. ~ 

So, as you stand leaning over the wooden railings 
of the wooden bridge, listening dreamily to the rush 
of waters, and looking abstractedly at the common- 
place brick factory, you feel that this incursion from 
the ancient world may dwindle into insignificance, or 
rise into nationality ; but all the same the ancient 
world is here. The grandeur and the antiquity, the 
vague, veiled splendor, the secret, sacred learning, are 
unsealed, and the Celestials are making shoes in a 
Yankee factory. 

We reckon these Chinese as heathen and publicans, 
to be civilized and christianized. But what do they 
think of us ? 

I am sure that those almond eyes are watchful, and 
theories are forming under those black coronets. 

Two women come chattering up the bridge ; and we 
accost each other in friendly country fashion. Among 
other objects of interest, they point out the Chinese 
factory. I love information at first-hand ; and I ask if 
our Asiatic friends are welcome. 

"No, indeed!" says the portly matron, bridling 



MISSIONARY MUSINGS. 317 

with indignation. ' ' They've no business here ! Every- 
body hates 'em but Mr. Sampson; and he worships 
'em more than he does his Maker." 

It is a new view of the bond between employer and 
workmen. 

" How are they offensive? " I ask. " Do they not 
behave well? " 

"I don't know but they behave well enough. But 
they have no business here ! " 

"Are they riotous, quarrelsome, noisy? Do they 
rob hen-roosts and clothes-lines ? Do they mingle in 
street-fights, and stir up strife?" 

" jSTo, they are peaceable enough. They are afraid 
to do any thing of that kind. They are too afraid 
themselves. They clasn't do any mischief." 

11 Perhaps they would behave well, even if they were 
not frightened into it. We might, at least, give them 
the benefit of the doubt." 

"But they've no business here. They don't take 
any part in the government. They've no wives or 
families. They don't mean to stay here. They only 
come to get money, — our money." 

"That is an innocent object, if they use innocent 
means ; and we boast that this is a free country, open 
to all. Perhaps, if we treat them fairly, they will 
presently bring their families, and become citizens." 

"We don't want any more foreigners. There's 
enough here now." 



318 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

u But the nation was originally founded by foreign- 
ers. And if these people are quiet, honest, and in- 
dustrious, may they not be a real advantage to us? " 

" No : they don't spend any money. They lay it all 
up, and live on nothin'. If there's a concert or a 
lecture, Mr. Sampson has 'em all go, and take the best 
seats. You can't get anywhere, because he's got 
money, and is just king." 

" But they pay for their seats ? " 

u Oh, yes! they pay for every thing. But I call 
'em no better than a mess of hogs." 

Evidently this " mess of hogs " is not wholly given 
over to evil. While I am writing this, I take up a 
chance volume of Goethe, and find him sa} r ing to 
Eckermann," Since I saw you, I have read many and 
various things, among which a Chinese romance has 
occupied and interested me most of all." 

"Chinese romance!" said I. "That is, indeed, 
something quite out of the way." 

" Not so much as you think," said Goethe. " The 
Chinamen think, act, and feel almost exactly like us ; 
and we should feel perfect congeniality with them, if 
all thej' do were not more clear, more pure, and 
decorous than with us. . . . 

" Then 3'ou find an infinite number of legends, . . . 
all turning upon what is moral and proper. 'Tis this 
severe habit of regulation in every thing which has 



MISSIONARY MUSINGS. 319 

sustained the Chinese empire for thousands of years 
past, and will for thousands to come. 

"I find a remarkable contrast to this Chinese 
romance in the ' Chansons de Beranger,' which have, 
almost every one, some immoral or licentious sub- 
ject. ... Is it not remarkable that the subjects of 
the Chinese poets should be so thoroughly moral, and 
those of the most distinguished French poet of the 
present day be exactly the contrary? " 

I asked whether the Chinese romance of which he 
spoke were one of their best. 

' ' By no means ! ' ' said Goethe. ' ' The Chinese have 
thousands of them." 

In our own day and country, we see that they are 
peaceable and docile, eager to learn our language and 
our ways, and are therefore, of their own accord, 
putting themselves into very good training for Christi- 
anity- ; while the hostility, the tumult, and the brick- 
bats are on the American side. Would it not be well 
to leave the Chinese to themselves for the present, and 
to see that Massachusetts and California are well 
stocked with missionaries, whose first duty shall be to 
preach to American citizens that the Chinese are not a 
1 ' mess of hogs " ? If the Chinese are not human beings, 
" subject to like passions as we are," we waste money 
in sending them the gospel : if they are human beings, 
it must strike them strangely that we thrust ourselves 



320 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

into their homes with the Bible, and receive them in 
our homes with stones. If we cannot christianize our 
own communities into a fellow-feeling with the Chinese, 
what ground have we for expecting to christianize 
Chinese communities into a fellow-feeling with us? 
We have long counted Chinese exclusiveness and 
seclusiveness as a mark of barbarism ; but I cannot 
see that China has expressed her desire to be let alone 
by America in any more emphatic or barbarous manner 
than America has expressed her desire to be let alone 
of China. American missionaries have directly inter- 
fered to alter established Chinese institutions ; but 
Chinese immigrants have been only too happy to con- 
form to our laws and customs. They have never 
attempted to proselyte, or even to modify. They have 
simply and humbly sought to earn an honest living by 
supplying labor which we need, at prices which we fix. 
And they have been met with a ferocity and a brutality 
which would do credit to the darkest Paganism, and 
which ought to figure brilliantly in some Chinese 
" Fox's Book of Martyrs." 

The situation is certainly peculiar. We go to great 
expense in conveying a few ministers to that human 
hive ; but when the bees swarm on our shores, at 
their own expense, we beat one, and kill another, and 
stone another, which must seem a little incongruous to 
the bees. I not long since heard a missionary who had 



MISSIONARY MUSINGS. 321 

spent many years in China describe her disintegration 
and demoralization, arising, in part at least, from the 
opium-war and sundry foreign influences ; and when I 
asked him whether, on the whole, contact with Chris- 
tian nations had as yet done China more harm or good, 
he answered promptly and emphatically, u Harm, a 
hundred times ! " 

A late writer tells us that one of our early Indian 
missionaries found a greater obstacle in the lawless 
and immoral conduct of some of the Dutch than in 
the Paganism of the Indians. How would it do to 
turn our half-million of money, and our hundreds of 
missionaries, into our own land, and keep them there 
until the nation is so thoroughly christianized, that it 
becomes by its mere existence a missionary nation ; 
till every ship's crew that leaves its shores on any 
errand of pleasure or commerce or science shall, by 
their purity, integrity, unselfishness, preach an irre- 
sistible gospel to Jew and Gentiles ? 

How would it do to let the Chinese worship God 
their own way in their own land, until we have chris- 
tianized America up to the point of not plundering 
and murdering the Chinese when they come to us ? 

A missionary from China was announced to speak 
upon the work which had been done in China. It was 
precisely what I was eager to know ; and I took good 
care to be in attendance. He was very interesting, 



322 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

full of sincerity and simplicity. He drew a contrast 
between the Chinese and ourselves. Our feet point 
downward ; the Chinese, upward. But that was the 
paradox of our childhood. We read a book from the 
beginning to the end ; the Chinese, from the end to 
the beginning. But we learned that before we had 
left our childhood far behind us. Here, in riding 
across country, we see church-spires rising all around : 
there we see no church-spires. But that we could 
evolve from our moral consciousness. Here we sleep 
on beds : there they sleep on their ovens. Every one 
to his taste. 

" A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day," 

is not unknown to Christendom. Here our teaming is 
done by horses and oxen : there you will see a donkey 
and a woman working together. But we need not 
leave our own country to see that. In China the ladies 
pinch their feet to make them small : here they pinch 
their waists. Does that indicate unquestionable supe- 
riority ? 

All this, and much more, is very interesting ; but I 
can draw from it no opinion at all as to whether we 
have really put an opening wedge into China, or only 
driven a tack into the outmost bark. When I learn, 
that, within the last six or seven years, the missionary 
has numbered eighty or ninety converts, I begin to see 



MISSIONARY MUSINGS. 323 

light. That is as many, perhaps, as his American 
confreres have gathered into their home churches in 
that time, and is an encouraging sign ; but I immedi- 
ately long to know what sort of person a Chinese con- 
vert is, how much he differs from a Chinese Pagan, 
what are his ideas of uprightness and honor, what are 
his rank and influence in Chinese circles, and what is 
the rank of a Christian colony or a Christian church in 
Chinese society. American merchants have told me, 
that some of their Chinese business acquaintance, 
unmitigated heathen, have had as high and delicate a 
standard of integrity and generosity as any Christian 
community can show. Is this exceptional, or general? 
My returned missionary says he has no doubt, that, in 
time, China will be like America. In what time, I 
wonder ; and, outside of the nature of things, what are 
the grounds of his belief? Besides the conviction, — 

" That somehow good 
Will be the final goal of ill," 

is there actual indication that China will be able 
to exhibit, for instance, a statesmanship, a financial 
ability, an unbending integrity, a supreme regard for 
the rights and welfare of others, approximating those 
which have illustrated the government of our own 
commercial metropolis ? 

We will not give up our Chinese missions, expensive 



324 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

though they be ; for as one little stream, pouring into 
the fissure of a rock, will finally rend and shatter the 
whole mass, so our little gospel-rill is going presently 
to shiver this great Pagan empire, and rear upon its 
ruins a Christian civilization which shall be a joy to 
the whole earth. 

But, while we are waiting, would it not be prudent 
and economical to take advantage of other means? 
We will continue to send out missionaries at great 
cost ; but we will not forget, that, at North Adams and 
California, the heathen have come to us at their own 
expense. To be sure, they are not on pleasure or 
religion bent, but have a frugal mind. Yet if, while 
they are merely pegging at their boots and shoes, we 
could quietly convert them into Christians, it would 
certainly be a great deal cheaper than to fasten them 
up in China, and convert them there. And, as we have 
only about half a million a year to spend oh the whole 
world, it must be readily seen that the question of 
dollars and cents becomes a very important one. We 
take heart by looking at the Sandwich Islands, w T hich 
were the seat of a savage society, murderous, idola- 
trous, licentious. Now they are clothed, and in their 
right mind. They are governed by a constitution ; and 
they worship the true God. So the missionaries 
preach, and so we believe. But, on the other hand, 
infidels and unbelievers, and even good Christians, tell 



MISSIONARY MUSINGS, 325 

us that the natives are dying out. In the good old 
times, when they worshipped their own gods, and were 
not hampered by dress, they numbered four hundred 
thousand. Now they are but sixty-five thousand. The 
infidels admit, indeed, that this depopulation had 
begun before the missionaries appeared upon the 
scene ; but their appearance has not checked it. The 
rate of decrease has even been higher than ever since 
the mission-work ; and they attribute it to the fact 
that the missionaries have substituted for the natural 
dress and the natural amusement of the simple island- 
ers the cumbrous dress and the severe manners of 
their own austere climate. 

Have we carried the gospel and the arts of civiliza- 
tion to a nation that was rapidly dying out, and has it 
been dying all the more rapidly since it accepted us ? 
If so, is it good economy? Is there some offset of 
which we know nothing ? Is there any thing in the 
position of the Sandwich Islands which makes it 
incumbent on us to have a Christian people there, even 
though we slay the natives with the sword of the 
Spirit, and substitute for them a population transported 
from our own shores ? Is it, at any rate, so important 
as to compensate us for the pain of seeing, both in the 
secular and religious newspapers, that our home mis- 
sionaries are not receiving their usual grants from the 
Home Missionary Society ; that ministers in October, 

28 



326 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

" supporting themselves on a mere pittance any way," 
have received no payments since the first of August ; 
that five hundred missionaries have waited months for 
the remittance from New York (" their credit is 
impaired, their ambition sapped"); that there is 
untold anxiety in the missionaries' homes, on account 
of the delay in remitting salaries ; that the A. H. M. 
S. owes forty thousand dollars to missionaries for labor 
already performed ; and that some of them have 
already sacrificed their furniture and books, and have 
even sold the horse and cow from their frontier homes, 
to obtain the necessaries of life ? 

This, at least, seems indisputable, — that the world 
is one. He who works at home faithfully is doing as 
good service as he who sails the wide seas over. 
Wherever a man's taste, powers, circumstances, call 
him to go, thither he shall go unblamed ; and, if he 
choose to stay in quiet havens, equally unblamed shall 
he stay. It is not tvhere he lives, but how he lives, 
that decides the character of his stewardship. He 
shall put to the best account his love of novelty, stir, 
travel, fresh ways and large affairs : but he shall not 
call it consecration ; nor shall he imply that the quiet, 
home-staying student's life is inspired by indolence or 
love of ease and self. He is consecrated who does 
always his best work as unto God, and not as unto 
man. His consecration may lead him to martyrdom 



MISSIONARY MUSINGS. 327 

in the deserts of Africa, or by his own fireside, to 
comfort on the pleasant uplands of India, or to bound- 
less content in the beloved valleys of his father- 
land. 



THE LAWS OF ANGEK. 




9 



THE LAWS OF ANGER. 

|0 far as the Scriptures contain rules, popularly 
so called, those rules are not for us ; and, so 
far as the Scriptures are for us, they are hardly 
to be called rules. The rules of the Bible are chiefly 
to be found in the Old Testament, and were strictly 
laid down for the Jews. The New Testament widens 
its scope to embrace the whole world ; but it directly 
and forcibly abrogates rules, and deals only in princi- 
ples. 

It is, in some respects, far easier to be guided by 
rules than by principles. A rule tells you exactly 
what to do : a principle leaves you to find out for 
yourself. A rule demands only obedience : a principle 
requires judgment. Government by rule attaches re- 
sponsibility chiefly to the ruler : government by prin- 
ciple fastens it upon the individual actor. Those who 
are governed can make but one mistake, — disobedi- 
ence, which is fatal : those who govern themselves may 
make a thousand mistakes, none of which is fatal, save 
the mistake of motive. If the divine object were to 

331 



332 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

have an orderly and decorous world, one would say we 
ought to be governed by rules : if it were to build up 
a world of intelligent and dignified beings, we should 
be, as we are, relegated to principles. 

Reason teaches us, that if there is any God at all, 
any God worthy of worship, he is the God of the whole 
world. He is the Creator and Guardian, not of Jew 
and Christian alone, but of Gentile and Pagan as well. 
He did not withhold himself from the human race in its 
infancy, and come to its help only when it had grown 
into fulness of days : everywhere, and at all times, 
he has revealed himself in such ways as seemed to him 
good. Many ages and many nations have never heard 
of our Bible ; yet in no one of them, says that Bible, 
confirming the conclusions of our reason, has God 
left himself without a witness. The Bible may be the 
clearest lamp unto our feet, and the brightest light 
unto our path ; but it does not profess to be the only, 
light that ever shone upon the world ; and the attempt 
to make it so throws a glamour and uncertainty upon 
the path. There can be no harmony of the Gospels, no 
symmetrical plan of salvation, no sufficient theory of 
life, unless we admit that God is the Father and Friend 
of the whole human race, that he works efficiently 
without, as well as within, the Bible, and that not only 
upon Sinai and Zion may his presence shine, but upon 
every high hill under the whole heaven. 



THE LAWS OF ANGER. 333 

I think it would not be far wrong to say that the 
popularly received Christian doctrine of resentment is, 
that there should be no resentment. " I say unto you, 
That ye resist not evil : but whosoever shall smite thee 
on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if 
any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy 
coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever 
shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. 
Give to him that asketh thee, and, from him that would 
borrow of thee, turn not thou away." These and such 
teachings as these are our warrant for resolving the 
whole duty of man into a mush of complacency. We 
have never yet quite succeeded in the effort. We find 
ourselves ever and anon flaming out into indignation 
and wrath. If a man smite us on the right cheek, we 
knock him down. If a man sue us at the law, we 
stand suit ; and if he would borrow of us, we promptly 
turn away, unless he can give ample security. But we 
have succeeded so far as to do these things in a shame- 
faced, apologetic manner. We have succeeded so far 
as to give those who are outside the church weapons 
to wield against it which they would not otherwise pos- 
sess, and which are unlawful to hold. We have suc- 
ceeded so far as to put an odium upon anger. We do 
not recognize it as the natural and proper exercise of 
certain faculties ; but we deem it the overflow of evil 
passions. We by no means obey these precepts of 



334 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

Christ ; but we say they, and they only, ought to be 
obeyed ; and we admit that the reason we do not obey 
them is hardness of heart. 

I admit nothing of the sort. This seems to me a 
feeble and false presentation of Christianity, as far 
removed from real Christianity as it is from Paganism. 
In the first place, it is absolutely unreasonable ; and 
nothing which is unreasonable can be Christian. In 
the second place, it is impracticable ; and nothing 
which is impracticable can be Christian. But, in the 
third place, it is utterly antagonistic to the gist of 
Christ's teachings, and to the whole course of his 
life. He says explicitly, " Think not that I am come 
to destroy the law or the prophets : I am not come to 
destroy, but to fulfil." When he quoted them of old 
time, who said, " An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a 
tooth," did he mean to condemn them? He says expli- 
citly not. He introduces a new principle ; but he does 
not withdraw the old. He goes further in the direc- 
tion which Moses travelled. When they of old time 
said, u Thou shalt not commit adultery : thou shalt not 
kill : thou shalt demand eye for eye from thine enemy," 
they spoke in the interests of truth and purity, of law 
and order. Recklessness on the one hand, and revenge 
on the other, were curbed by the law of eye for eye. 
Whatever communication God may have held with his 
world outside of the biblical record, we little know. 



THE LAWS OF ANGER. 335 

We do know that there was great need of well-defined 
laws among the Jews. Moses found his people violent 
and barbarous ; and he repressed them with simple and 
wholesome laws. When these laws had done their 
work, Christ came and informed them with spiritual 
life. Where Moses had forbidden murder, Christ went 
deeper, and forbade those evil thoughts in the heart, 
out of which murder springs. Where Moses had for- 
bidden indiscriminate and unlimited revenge, Christ 
went further, and inculcated forgiveness and friendli- 
ness. He did not preach the duty of resentment, 
because there was no need of it. Anger is one of the 
earliest and easiest instincts of the human being, and, 
in the natural course of things, needs to be trained by 
discretion and discrimination. Forgiveness belongs to 
a higher and more spiritualized and advanced stage. 
But that Christ did not mean to extirpate anger, and 
substitute forgiveness, is proved by the whole tenor of 
his own life. It is no weak, yielding, namby-pamby 
figure which the authors of the Gospels draw for us, 
but a Being of severe and exacting majesty. When 
the Pharisees shut their eyes to the claims of humanity, 
and counted a legal phrase more strenuous than human 
suffering, he looked round about on them with anger. 
Often his anger burst out in bitter, scorching words : 
" Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! 
for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, 



336 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

and, when he is made, ye make him twofold more the 
child of hell than yourselves. Hypocrites, fools, blind, 
v/hited sepulchres. " "Tribunes," "Times," and 
"Heralds," nay, even "Christian Unions," "Inde- 
pendents," and "Observers" address each other in 
no more uncomplimentary terms than these. And 
they are not the words of a well-meaning but short- 
coming Christian, a man who tried to follow Christ, 
but found the old Adam too strong for the young 
Melancthon : the}^ are the words of Jesus Christ him- 
self, the sinless and perfect man, "the only-begotten 
of the Father, full of grace and truth." Nay, more, 
his anger was not confined to words. When this man, 
who was so meek and forbearing, who taught submis- 
sion to evil, and patience under insult, — when he saw 
God's temple profaned to profit and pelf, his anger was 
kindled into an over-mastering fury : he armed him- 
self, and alone drove out the crowd of hucksters and 
peddlers, scattered their money, upset their tables, 
ordered out their wares, and made a clean sweep of 
the whole filthy concern. There was no turning of the 
other cheek, no giving-up of the cloak also, but a 
summary and forcible check put upon abuses. If it 
had been an ordinary church-member, the world look- 
ing on, and especially the marketmen who had been 
turned out of their comfortable stalls, would very 
likely have said that this reformer and radical had 



THE LAWS OF ANGER. 337 

lost his temper, and become as one of us. But he 
was the Lord Christ in his anger, in his denunciation, 
in his force, just as truly, just as divinely, and just as 
exemplarity, as when he cried, "Father, forgive 
them ; for they know not what they do." 

The Lamb of God was so meek, that he suffered 
himself to be slain for us ; but there came a time when 
" the kings of the earth . . . and the mighty 
men . . . hid themselves in the dens, and in the 
rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountain and 
rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from . . . the wrath 
of the Lamb : for the great day of his wrath is come ; 
and who shall be able to stand?" 

God's first revelation to man is man: his second is 
the law : his third is the gospel. One supplements 
and complements, but does not contradict, its predeces- 
sors. It abrogates only by fulfilment. If the human 
race guided and controlled itself perfectly, it would 
need no law : if it perfectly obeyed the law, it would 
need no gospel. Neither law nor gospel requires the 
annihilation of any faculty which God has given to 
man, and which he gave before law or gospel. When 
the law saj-s, " Thou shalt not kill," it makes no iron- 
bound prohibition ; for this direction is explicitly mod- 
ified by sundry other directions concerning the modes 
and circumstances in which thou shalt kill. When the 
gospel says, " Resist not evil," it furnishes no ground 

29 



338 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

for universal and immoral acquiescence in or toleration 
of wrong ; for the gospel abounds in examples of 
stern and strenuous resistance of evil. It only means, 
that along with the right resentment of outrage, of 
resistance to evil, which the world has always practised, 
lies another finer right and duty, — namely, that of 
forbearance and forgiveness. When we are to exercise 
the one or the other, each man is to judge for himself. 
There are times when a man does well to be angry ; 
and there are times when he does well to forgive. This 
is certain : " If thy brother trespass against thee seven 
times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to 
thee, saying, I repent, thou shalt forgive him ; nay, 
until seventy times seven." It must be a little hard 
when it gets into the four hundreds ; but even a tran- 
sient repentance, a feeble impulse toward right, is to 
be recognized and encouraged. But stronger than the 
assertion is the inference, that, if he do not repent, 
thou shalt not forgive him. The doctrine which I 
have heard preached as the word of God, the gospel 
of Christ, — that forgiveness does not depend upon 
repentance, that we must treat those who have done us 
a wrong precisely as if they had not done it, — is irra- 
tional, unscriptural, and demoralizing. It violates the 
first instincts of healthy human nature : it puts virtue 
and vice on the same level, and thus removes a power- 
ful incentive to the one, and preventive of the other : 



THE LAWS OF ANGER. 339 

it makes the man himself the centre of his action, and 
regards not at all the effect of his course upon his 
brother, the wrong-doer. 

There are certain broad lines of demarcation in 
Christ's example, which we should do well to trace. 
We find that his forbearance was exercised towards 
those who had wronged himself: his wrath blazed 
towards those who wronged others. His pity and 
patience were lavished on the poor, the suffering, the 
ignorant : he spared little to the rich and bigoted, who 
misled and misruled them. When he saw the multi- 
tude, he was moved with compassion on them ; but he 
branded the scribes and Pharisees as blind leaders 
of the blind, and hypocrites. He forgave, unasked, 
those who crowned him with thorns, and doomed him to 
cruel death ; but whoso shall but offend one of these 
little ones ... it were better for him that a millstone 
should be hanged about his neck, and that he were 
drowned in the depth of the sea. When the mob 
would have cast him down headlong from the brow of 
the hill, he only slipped out of their hands, and went 
his way without words ; but no denunciation was too 
strong for those who bind heavy burdens . . . and 
lay them on men's shoulders, while themselves will not 
move them with one of their fingers ; for those who 
shut up the kingdom of heaven against men, and will 
neither go in themselves, nor suffer them that are enter- 



340 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY, 

ing to go in ; for those who devour widows' houses, 
and for a pretence make long prayers ; for those who 
compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and, 
when he is made, make him twofold more the child 
of hell than themselves ; for those who pay tithe of 
mint and anise and cumin, and omit judgment, 
mercy, and faith ; for those who make clean the 
outside of the cup and of the platter, but within are 
full of extortion and excess ; for those who build the 
tombs of the prophets, yet crucify the successors of 
the prophets, — for them we hear little of compassion, 
nothing of forgiveness, but Ye serpents, ye genera- 
tion of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of 
hell? 

In all this, Christ spoke the sentiments of honest, 
uncontaminated human nature. Instinct, reason, ex- 
perience, and revelation are in perfect accord. It was 
no nerveless, emasculated, sentimental, and impracti- 
cable gospel which he preached, but a gospel of dis- 
crimination and emphasis and vitalit} r , — a gospel for 
the conduct of business and courtesy, as well as of 
religion, — a gospel masculine, as well as feminine; 
of strength, as well as of refinement ; of self-respect, 
as well as of self-sacrifice ; of force, as well as of 
feeling. 

Let anger, then, resume its place as an original and 
dignified function of the human organization, and be 



THE LAWS OF ANGER. 341 

no more looked upon as the outburst of a rebellious 
outlaw, or an invincible alien. While we are not to 
be petty and touchy, easily provoked, self-centred, 
solicitous of our own dignity, imagining evil, quick to 
fry into a passion, strict to mark iniquity against our- 
selves, implacable and revengeful ; while we are to be 
generous and large minded, to ascribe good intent 
where evil intent is not demonstrable, and not to take 
offence unless offence is meant, — we are equally under 
bonds not to level the barriers between courtesy and 
discourtesy, between justice and injustice, between 
right and wrong. We owe it to the wrong-doer to 
throw all the weight of our disapprobation against his 
wrong-doing. If the wrong be done not to ourselves, 
but to others, and if, in addition, it be a wrong done 
to the weak and the helpless, it is difficult to learn 
from the Bible, or from our own hearts, what expres- 
sion of indignation would be excessive. So far from 
the truth is it, that an outburst of wrath must be un- 
christian, the sudden explosion of surprised but de- 
praved nature, it may rather be that non-explosiveness 
is but an apathy of the conscience, a dulness of 
sympathetic perception, an outgrowth of selfishness, a 
defect of the moral organization. The only man who 
may be fairly inferred to have lost his temper is the 
man who never shows that he has any. If he that is 
angry with his brother without cause is in danger of 

29* 



342 SEE310NS TO THE CLERGY, 

the judgment, what reason have we to suppose that he 
who is not angry with his brother when there is cause 
should go scot-free? When oppression, fraud, malice, 
are banished from the earth, we can afford to be even- 
tempered ; but, in their present roaring and rampant 
prosperity, it is more Christian that our hearts should 
roll up mountain-ranges of disapproval, and occasion- 
ally burst into volcanoes of burning indignation. God 
is angry with the wicked every day, and makes repent- 
ance and reformation the conditions of forgiveness. 
What right have we to look upon the wicked with 
tranquillity, and take him into our confidence and com- 
panionship, as if he had never sinned? To be hasty 
in spirit, to be angry, is the mark of a petty nature : 
to be slow to anger is one mark of a large nature : to 
put a ban upon anger is not the work of the divine 
nature. 

The excesses of anger are to be deprecated. The 
man who loses control of himself in his wrath is never 
to be admired. That is a weakness which he should 
conquer. But he who holds himself well in hand 
while he hurls his wrath at the evil-doer ; he who never 
loses sight of human weakness, even while the flame of 
his indignation leaps forth to consume wickedness, — 
he is not to be apologized for as a halting disciple : 
he is rather to be rejoiced over as an effective apostle. 
Blessed are the peace-makers indeed; but blessed, 



THE LAWS OF ANGER. 343 

also, is whoever cometh in the name of the Lord, 
though he come not to send peace, but a sword. 

In this, as in every other question, it is well to 
remember that no one text or precept of the Bible 
undertakes to set forth in general and in particular 
the whole duty of man. One phase of the truth is 
illustrated in one place, and one in another. Every 
man must decide for himself, on every occasion, as to 
the bearings of the Bible on his own behavior ; as to 
whether he is right to be angry, or right to forbear ; 
as to whether he demand eye for eye, or resist not 
evil ; as to whether he submit to, or revolt against, the 
powers that be ; as to whether he answer a fool accord- 
ing to his folly, or answer him not. This is an ever- 
recurring trouble. It gives a man no rest, but keeps 
him constantly using his observation, his conscience, 
and his judgment. Nevertheless, it seems to be the 
divine way, and we cannot help ourselves. We may 
insist that a part is the whole, that a principle is a 
precept, that a mariner's compass is a baby-jumper; 
but such insistence does not alter the facts. The uni- 
verse with all its laws is around us. The Bible with 
all its mysteries is before us. Not a hair's-breadth 
will be changed in the one or the other, because we 
fail to apprehend them. 



THE SIGHING OF THE PEISONEK. 




THE SIGHING OF THE PRISONER. 

JE should be able to reform the world mucn 
faster and further than we now do, if we 
could only have full swing at it ; but we are 
constantly hampered by the necessity of respecting the 
freedom of the individual. If we could enact and 
enforce a law, that no man should do what was not 
good for him, and that all men should do what waG for 
their good, we should save the world at one swoop. 
We should have no drunkards ; for we would forbid the 
first intoxicating glass. We should have no paupers ; 
for idleness and extravagance should be equally illegal. 
As it is, the law cannot touch a man so long as he 
injures only himself, but must wait until he endanger 
or annoy others ; that is, it lays no hand upon him 
while he is sowing the seed, but only when the evil 
harvest stands ready to be garnered, which is gener- 
ally too late to be of much service to the man himself. 
There seems here to be a great waste : nevertheless, it 
is the divine way. Man grants to man no more power 
to hurt himself than is granted him by his Maker. 

347 



848 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

When we long for absolute dominion, when it seems to 
us that great good would be done if we could force 
men to work steadily and thoroughly, to spend their 
wages economically, and lay up money for future 
emergencies, to train their children virtuously, and 
treat their wives justty, and be generally thriving and 
respectable, we are obliged to remember that evidently 
God thought not so. Apparently it seems to him 
better that men should go wrong than that they should 
go right, under pressure. More is gained by letting 
them walk alone, even with much stumbling, than by 
walling them in on both sides, and holding them 
upright. 

Nevertheless, when men have carried so far their 
liberty to stumble and sin, that they impinge upon the 
liberty of others, society steps in, and imposes re- 
straints ; and there is where we have the opportunity, 
and where, therefore, our duty lies, to practise our 
theories of inculcating and enforcing right. So long 
as a man is outside of prison-walls, he must go his own 
way, right or wrong. He may abuse his advantages, 
and ruin his chances, both for usefulness and happi- 
ness, and you can only remonstrate and advise ; and 
perhaps not even that will be wise. But once he has 
forfeited his freedom, once he comes into a state of 
pupilage, and society can wreak upon him its teaching 
and preaching, not only with a good heart, but with 
sound judgment. 



THE SIGHING OF THE PRISONER. 349 

There has sometimes been evinced a species of 
sympathy with prisoners, that is neither politic nor 
sensible. Feelings are attributed to them which would 
surprise no one more than themselves. Defects of 
early education, peculiarities of temper or disposition, 
are brought forward as palliatives of crime. Doubtless 
they are palliatives in the eye of the Maker of us all. 
Doubtless, at the judgment-seat of the heavens, many 
an earthly decision will be reversed, and many a man 
whose deserts are unawarded in this world will be 
ranked below others who on earth forfeited freedom 
by open and dangerous crimes. Still it remains that 
we do not have to plead in the courts of heaven, but 
of earth. Our juries are not called upon to decide 
moral, but legal guilt. Our judges are not appointed 
to lay bare the secrets of the divine system, but for 
the defence of society. It may be that a man has 
committed burglary, because his father trained him to 
evil courses ; or murder, because his grandfather trans- 
mitted to him a diseased thirst for intoxicating drinks. 
All these things may pass in review before the divine 
mind ; but they do not, and they ought not, to remit or 
mitigate the penalty imposed by human justice. Legal 
codes must be founded, so far as may be, on right and 
wrong. To excuse a man for a wicked act because he 
has previously done a weak act, is to put a premium 
on weakness. To pardon a man for criminal violence, 

30 



350 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

because his father never curbed his violent passions 
when a child, would be to encourage parental indolence ; 
would be to remove one of the methods whereby society 
attempts to make up for the defects of home-training. 

But when the law has once withdrawn a man from 
the world, and shut him up in a prison for the good of 
society, it ought to turn about, and teach and train 
him for his own good. The freedom of the individual 
is abolished. Justice has got him under her thumb. 
It is not enough that the condition of the prisoner is 
ameliorated, that he is no longer starved and tortured 
and degraded. The education that he has failed to 
receive before ought to be furnished him after his incar- 
ceration. The habits of industry which he has never 
formed should be then imposed upon him. In large 
measure, this is already done ; but there is room for 
increased effort. When I hear that a man is sentenced 
to twenty 3^ears' imprisonment for midnight burglary, 
I am moved to no pity for him. If I have pity, it is 
for the man who has lost, in a night, the labor and love 
of years : it is for the women and children shocked 
with sudden terror into illness and death : it is for a 
neighborhood tortured with long alarm, all that one 
man, or set of men, may live without regular work, 
upon the regular work of others. So far from mitigat- 
ing his penalty, I would, if possible, make his banish- 
ment from the world more lasting and more secure. 



THE SIGHING OF THE PRISONER. 351 

But let another world be opened to him, which shall 
not be merely a living grave. He has failed in this : 
there is for him no second trial. A stigma is affixed 
to his name, which no tears of repentance can wash 
out ; but in his prison-world let hope beckon, and com- 
fort and motive not be wanting. When I hear that, 
of the hundreds in a single prison, only half can be 
employed, because there is not work enough for them, 
I am moved with pity. To set a hundred wretched 
minds preying upon themselves is not punishment : it 
is unintended and unmeaning torment. Punishment 
should be absolute, but not vindictive. We may 
admit that it is not remedial, but preventive ; but if, 
while it protects society, it reforms the criminal, is 
harm done? I would have every prison made, so far 
as is possible, a reform-school for its inmates. Neither 
society nor the individual may be wilfully guilty con- 
cerning its brother whom it has imprisoned ; but, when 
once it has him in its power, it becomes guilty, if it 
leave any stone unturned for his benefit. He is often 
ignorant : he should be taught. He has lived in low 
ways because he knew of no higher: let him be 
wisely and warily led into the upper regions. He has 
had no religious instruction ; his spiritual nature is 
untouched: let the dull and uninteresting preachers 
prose to what outside ears can be got to listen to them, 
since outside are many means of grace ; but let these 



352 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

imprisoned and dumb lips be touched with live coals. 
These criminals seldom, if ever, knew how healthful, 
was the process, and how sweet the rewards, of daily 
tasks well done. Why should it not be taught them, 
partly by enforcing regular work, partly by investing 
for them the wages of their work, after deducting the 
expense of their maintenance? The State does not 
want its prisons to be pecuniarily profitable for the 
profit's sake. Suppose a man has spent five years in 
prison. Suppose his earnings over and above his 
share of the expenses have been for that time a thou- 
sand dollars. It is a very small thing whether that 
money goes into the State coffers or not ; but it is not 
a small thing if the man have acquired a trade, regular 
habits, and has a capital of one thousand dollars to 
begin life with. It may be the difference to him 
between an honest career and a return to evil courses. 
It may be the difference to the State between a citizen 
constantly adding to her wealth, virtue, and strength, 
and a rogue preying upon all. 

Certain cells in a well-ordered State's prison were 
provided with good kerosene lamps. The keeper said 
that all prisoners who were condemned for twenty 
years or more were allowed lamps in their cells that 
they might read in the evening. This is as it should be. 
Society often needs that a man should be banished for 
twenty years ; but it never needs that he should not be 



THE SIGHING OF THE PRISONER. 353 

instructed and improved as far as possible. So far as 
he is a criminal, he must be punished ; but, along with 
that, so far as he is a victim, let him be helped. If 
intellectual stimulus be an incentive to virtue, let us 
minister to his intellect. To the imagination of the 
classes which furnish the criminals, a prison would be 
none the less terrible because it was a reform-school as 
well as a prison ; while to those who are actually con- 
fined therein, it might prove a savor of life unto life. 
It is desirable that criminals should feel the power of 
law ; but if they can also feel that law is more be- 
nevolent than lawlessness, a double benefit is gained. 
If there be any thing in geography, history, science, 
poetry, in Sunday schools and music and Bible, in 
politics foreign and domestic, in patriotism and help- 
fulness and humanity, which is calculated to soften 
the manners, and stimulate the mind, and purify the 
heart, outside of prison-walls, it is equally so calculated 
within those walls. And that the men gathered there 
have been largely destitute of those advantages is the 
strongest reason why society should attend to them when 
the}' are brought under her absolute control. When 
a man is imprisoned for ever so short a time, let his 
intellectual and moral, as well as his industrial, educa- 
tion be taken up at precisely the point where it was 
relinquished outside. If he cannot read, let him begin 
with the alphabet. If he is a scholar, let his scholar- 

30* 



354 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

ship come into play. If he has robbed, let him restore 
the amount robbed before his return to freedom. Let 
him learn the value of daily earnings and accumulated 
treasures by accumulations and earnings of his own. 
That is, let not society inflict a purely arbitrary but a 
natural and logical punishment. He is a wicked man ; 
but half the value of punishment is lost when we 
remember only the wickedness and forget the manhood. 
Just as much is gained by treating criminals rationally 
as by treating children rationally ; for criminals are a 
sort of spoiled children. They have violated State 
law, but we have no right to violate it towards them. 
No more should we violate or disregard natural law in 
dealing with them. Cause and effect, motive and sen- 
timent, have just as full play with them as with outside 
folk. A violent and desperate fellow entered upon his 
imprisonment, declaring that nothing should induce 
him to perform the allotted task- work. When he was 
brought out with the others, he sat passive. For 
several days the warden took no notice of him. Then 
he quietly asked him who he was, why he was there, 
how long was his sentence, — as if he knew nothing 
about him, — and then as quietly added that the term 
of his sentence would be considered to begin from the 
time when he began to work. The man looked at the 
warden a moment. A new light broke upon his mind : 
he went to work at once, and remained, during his im- 



THE SIGHING OF THE PRISONER. 355 

prisonment, one of the most orderly and well-disposed 
of all the inmates. 

I wish I could add that after he came out he led 
a life of industry, honesty, and sobriety, and died 
lamented ; but that I do not know. I am sure he was 
more likely to do so than if he had been flogged and 
u burked" and shower-bathed, and hung up by his 
thumbs, and kept in solitary confinement in a dark 
cell. 

Let the sighing of the prisoner come before thee, not 
that he may be released from prison, but that his soul 
may be loosed from its bonds. 

An interesting, and at first sight humane custom 
has sprung up in the Massachusetts State-prison, and 
perhaps in the prisons of other States. A sumptuous 
Thanksgiving dinner is given to all the prisoners, — roast 
turkey, plum-pudding, and the vegetables, sauces, and 
other luxuries thereunto pertaining. No one can object 
to this little festival within those gloomy walls ; and, 
rather than it should fail, private charity would doubt- 
less step forward, and furnish the necessary funds. 
For these men, " roughs" and " rascallions " as 
they are, are also, let us always remember, victims, — 
victims of the ignorance and brutality of their parents 
and of society, — victims of evil training, and of their 
own unbridled passions. To whatever gratification can 
be furnished them without harm to themselves or to the 



356 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

community, they are thrice and four times welcome. 
Bid them into the circle of human brotherhood ; for to 
that they have a right. Blood-stained it may be, and 
crime-hardened, still God hath made them of one 
family with ourselves ; and if by any means they can 
be assured that they are not without the pale of human 
sympathy, they are removed one step at least toward 
reformation. 

But after the dinner there are certain exercises of a 
more questionable character. The prisoners are as- 
sembled : the warden addresses them, and announces 
to a certain number unconditional and immediate par- 
don, granted by the governor and council. The charac- 
ter of the crime, the duration of the sentence, seem not 
to enter into the case. The last newspaper announce- 
ment I have seen is simply this, omitting the names : — 

" After dinner, Warden C. made an address, and announced 
the pardons granted by the governor and council. The convicts 
liberated were A. B., sentenced to the institution from Boston, 
July, 1803, for life, for committing the crime of rape, and who 
is now fifty years old; C. D., sentenced June, 1868, for life, for 
committing murder in Worcester, now fifty- two years old; E. F., 
sentenced June, 1866, for twelve years, for robbery by force and 
violence in Boston, now thirty-seven years old; G. H., sentenced 
October, 1865, for fifteen years, for manslaughter committed in 
Boston, and now sixty-two years old." 

This is all. There is no explanation of the act, no 
presentation of the grounds for pardon. No one inti- 



THE SIGHING OF THE PRISONER. 357 

mates that a single prisoner was unfairly tried or 
unjustty convicted. There is no hint of any new evi- 
dence changing the complexion of their act. There is 
simply a Thanksgiving dinner, followed by "exer- 
cises ; " and four men, every one of them guilty of the 
worst crimes against society, every one of them guilty 
of force and violence, of the infliction of unspeakable 
horror, of death, and worse than death, are let loose 
upon the community, in spite of the law which was 
brought to bear upon them and the justice which was 
supposed to be meted out to them. A. B., sentenced 
for life, for rape, was pardoned after being in prison 
eleven }^ears, and has still nineteen years of life before 
him. C. D., sentenced for life, for murder, is par- 
doned out at the expiration of six years, and has 
eighteen vigorous years to brandish knife and pistol 
among his fellows. E. F., for robbery by force and 
violence, was sentenced for twelve years, and at the 
robust age of thirty-seven is discharged, after eight 
years of confinement. G. H. killed his man, and his 
fifteen years are reduced to nine, leaving him, at that, 
only eight years to try his hand, according to the 
allotted age of man. What is the use of all our 
expensive paraphernalia of law, if its decisions and its 
sentences are to be thus set aside ? Why should men 
be brought from their farms and their counting-rooms 
to serve on jury-seats ? Why should lawyers be clothed 



358 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

with dignity, and judges with power, if the result of 
their efforts is to be brought to nought by an outside 
authority? Do the governor and council know more 
about the case than lawyers, judge, and jury? Then 
why be at the expense of lawyers, judge, and jury? If 
the court is not so well informed as the council, let the 
court be abolished. If the men whose business it is to 
examine the case thoroughly, if the men who are liber- 
ally paid for that, and for nothing else, do not compre- 
hend it so well as men to whom it is only a side issue, 
one incident among many duties, why be at the expense 
of maintaining the unprofitable servants? Either let 
our courts of law be abolished, or let their decisions 
stand. 

There is annually published in Massachusetts a 
Blue Book, in which the governor records for the legis- 
lature the number of the pardons he has granted and 
the reasons for which he has granted them. I have 
never seen a copy of this volume, and I fancy it has 
no very general circulation ; but, from such extracts 
as I have seen, we could hardly gather arguments in 
favor of the practice of pardoning. 

The Blue Book for 1875 records eighty-seven pardons 
during the year 1874. In more than a dozen cases, 
pardon was granted because the sentence was consid- 
ered too severe ; in one, because the sentence was 
illegal; in one, because the prisoner was evidently 



THE SIGHING OF THE PRISONER. 359 

insane when his crime was committed ; in one, because 
the council felt there was reason to believe the wit- 
nesses against the prisoner were perjured ; in twelve 
cases, because the prisoner was intoxicated at the 
time of committing his offence ; two, because a comrade 
in crime had been pardoned ; one, because his twin- 
brother, from whom he had never been separated, was 
to leave prison at an earlier day, and the pardon was 
necessary to prevent their separation. In no one case 
do these extracts show that new evidence had been 
discovered. Even in those cases where the reasons, 
had they existed, would have been sufficient, there is 
but the smallest proof that they existed. Insanity of 
the prisoner, perjury of witnesses, belong, one would 
say, to lawyers, judge, and jury, the regularly appointed 
ministers of justice, who make its administration the 
business of their life ; not to an outside body, with 
whom it is a mere incidental duty. Many of the 
reasons alleged are purely frivolous ; and some are 
immoral and disastrous, calculated to foster, rather 
than repress, crime. 

Side by side with these festive and fraternal pardon- 
ings, we read such paragraphs as these : — 

"K. L., the notorious horse-thief, sentenced to the M. State- 
prison for six years, and pardoned about a year ago, was again 
arrested at O., charged with the same crime. 

" P. R, the burglar who was captured in the unoccupied house 



360 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

on B Street, Wednesday, is an old thief, and has a history. 
He was first arrested Aug. 6, 1865, for breaking and entering a 
dwelling-house. He had, about that time, broken into several 
dwelling-houses, and carried on his burglarious operations with 
the aid of two accomplices. The two latter were arrested after a 
desperate fight. When the case was tried, P. R. and one accom- 
plice received a sentence of twenty years each ; the other, five. 
P. R. was pardoned out November, 1872, after seven years' 
imprisonment." 

Is six years too long a time for a notorious horse- 
thief to be confined ? Before he was pardoned out, had 
he made restitution to all the men whose property he 
had stolen? Did P. B,. make any amends to the 
owners of the houses he had broken into? Had he 
atoned for the fright, the anxiety, the apprehensions, 
which his violence, his fightings, and his burglaries 
had caused among women and children? What 
extravagance and folly, what mockery of law, what 
satire upon justice, is it that riSes up in the glow of 
roast turkey and plum-pudding, and without any pre- 
text of new evidence, or any allegation of undue sever- 
ity in the judge, coolly throws open the prison-door, 
and lets the notorious horse-thief, the brain-rapping 
burglar, the murderer, and the devil incarnate go forth 
again up and down the earth, seeking whom they may 
destroy ! 

The least we can demand is, that the way out of 
prison shall be as well barred as the way in. If law- 



THE SIGHING OF THE PRISONER. 361 

yers, judge, and jury are necessary to protect "a mur- 
derer against a community, they are certainly just as 
essential to protect a community against the murderer. 
To try the burglar in open court, with lawyers to 
defend him, and then to let him out of the prison to 
which they have sentenced him, without giving the 
community so much as a warning, or any opportunity . 
to protest, is to bring law into discredit. The power 
to pardon should be taken out of the hands of the 
governor and council, or should be hedged round by 
as many safeguards against abuse as is the power to 
convict and punish. 

Is this a strange theme to introduce into ordinary 
discussion ? Is it a matter which pertains to profes- 
sional men, and not to untrained citizens, idiots, and 
women? Did the children murdered in Boston by that 
young fiend who was pardoned out of the Reform 
School belong any less to women than to men? It is 
only a few months ago that the murder of a woman 
shocked the whole country. A little New England 
family was living its quiet, happy, affectionate family 
life, as so many New England families do. Three 
women, domestic, industrious, independent, cultivated, 
and refined, doing their own work, enjoying society, 
music, literature, passed their gentle, harmless, help- 
ful days in the midst of a community that loved* and 
respected them. Up to this tranquil hearthstone 

31 



362 SEHMONS TO TEE CLERGY. 

tramped a hardened, a dehumanized sot, who had been 
twice imprisoned for " felonious assault " and 
" assault with intent to kill," and once pardoned out 
from a twelve-years' sentence, after four and a half 
years' detention, clutched the helpless woman, defaced 
her delicate and beautiful features, bruised and crushed 
her tender body, tore out her life with such reckless 
and brutal violence, that even the cold report of a 
municipal inquest affirms that the lovely face bore the 
expression of a person "dying in extreme agony," 
leaving to the unspeakable sorrow of her friends no 
consolation but that it is all over ; that her woe 
was past before theirs had begun; that whatever 
heaven awaits the pure in heart was hers long before 
they knew she had gone from earth ; that, out of the 
horror of great darkness, she escaped swiftly into the 
ineffable and all-atoning light. 

The young monster who has infested Boston and 
vicinity for the last few years made it his amusement 
to lure little children into by-places, and there torture 
and mutilate them. He was presently caught, and sent 
to the Reform School, where, as the supply of small 
children failed him, he seems to have behaved himself. 
Thereupon some mischief-maker, wiser in his own con- 
ceit than seven men that left the law alone, had the 
young monster pardoned out, and turned loose among 
the little children again. Naturally enough, he 



THE SIGHING OF THE PRISONER. 363 

improved his opportunities. With his appetite, of 
course, increased b}' long-enforced abstinence from his 
game, he gratified it to a greater extent, and tortured 
his little victims to death. Two innocent children, a 
bo} 7 and a girl, are supposed to have lost life at his 
cruel hands ; and he now stands in custody, awaiting 
the execution of his sentence, planning meanwhile, and 
partially executing, new crimes ; and social science is 
baffled to know what to do with him. 

Meanwhile other developments of a similar charac- 
ter cry aloud to social science. There is said to be a 
boy in the Reform School at Westborough, who, at 
eleven years of age, drowned, without provocation, a 
schoolmate five years of age, simply, as he said, " to 
see the little devil kick in the water." He had diverted 
himself before with stealing, with throwing stones on 
the railroad-track, and such pleasant sport, and never 
could be brought to express regret, or any thing but 
indifference, to the act for which he was arrested, con- 
victed of murder, and — sent to the Reform School. 

Then we hear of another case ; and this time it con- 
cerns the gentler sex. A young girl, Henrietta Wai- 
bel, fifteen years old, takes to burning houses, clothes, 
and particularly little children. She has no other 
motive or excuse than that she has a mania for it ; and 
she serenely informs her employer that she has often 
tried to burn places and children before. 



364 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

The metaphysical and perhaps the moral nature of 
these deeds belong to science ; but the protection of 
the little children who remain alive belongs to society, 
— to you, and to me, and to every person. It is not 
necessary to decide whether a boy inherits his propen- 
sity from a butcher-father and a butchery-witnessing 
mother ; it is not necessary to describe the exact meas- 
ure of guilt attributed to him by divine Justice : but 
it is necessary to prevent him from sticking his jack- 
knife into any more little girls and bo} T s. Many 
demand that he be hung. Others denounce such a de- 
mand as brutal. In this they are wrong. The demand 
may not be wise, but it is not brutal : it is the cry of 
terror over the danger of little children ; it does not 
spring from brutality, but from fear. 

We may admit, for the time, that Jesse Pomeroy is 
not morally guilty ; that he has inherited a thirst for 
blood, and has not inherited a will strong enough to 
overcome it. He is not, let us say, a fit object for 
moral indignation, and is only to be restrained from 
evil deeds. But how? We restrained him once. We 
sent him to a reform school ; and some interloper forth- 
with stepped in, snapped his fingers at the law, and 
Jesse Pomeroy was pardoned out. If we send him to 
the State-prison for life, he is as sure as statistics to 
be pardoned out at the end of six years, by which time 
he will be a man ; and if a youngster kills two, and 



THE SIGHING OF THE PRISONER. 365 

tortures tweruy, before he is sixteen, who can tell what 
feats of homicide he may perform at twenty-one ? If 
he is put into a lunatic asj'lum, the chances are that 
he will be sane enough to escape, or to lull his keepers 
into a belief in his sanity. 

The creature has a defective organization, and prob- 
ably has no idea of the real nature of the torture he 
inflicts. He has no sympathy to tell him the frenzy 
of agony and terror which he enforces upon his 
victims. If this intellectual deficiency could be helped 
out by a little experimental knowledge, it would 
probably sharpen somewhat his moral perceptions. 
If, for instance, a strong man should stand over him 
as long as he stood over each little boy, and give him 
as many cuts with a jack-knife as he dealt out # to his 
victim, — not by way of revenge, but simply to let 
light into his darkened mind, and show him how a 
jack-knife feels, and what pain and dread and terror and 
helplessness are,--— it might be a good thing for him. 
The old Jewish law, An eye for an eye, and a tooth 
for a tooth, seems the very perfection of penal law, 
the most accurate transcript of natural, which is 
divine, law. But society seems to have agreed not to 
carry it out, even where it was practicable. It is 
useless to say that we abolish it on account of the 
Saviour's condemnation ; for we do not in the least 
accept his alternative, which was non-resistance : so 

31* 



366 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY 

that we have now neither the law of the old nor of 
the new dispensation, but a substitution of our own. 
Since, then, the lex talionis is not in force, it only 
remains to do the best we can under such laws as we 
have. The law does permit restraint, which has been 
tried, and found not only useless, but fruitful of fresh 
crime and greater grief. The law also permits and 
prescribes the penalty of death. 

When Nature turns into the world children so 
unfortunately constituted as these stabbing, burning, 
drowning wretches, one feels for them a pity so pro- 
found that one would never subject them to the vicissi- 
tudes of this world, — a world which has very vague 
ideas on the subject of inherited traits and emotional 
insanity, and contemplates their possessors with horror 
and hate, — but would send them out of it as speedily 
and as mercifully as possible. To whatever world they 
may go, they cannot find one that has less use for them, 
or is less adapted to their peculiarities, than this. It 
is done, not to punish the children, but on the ground 
that Nature has put out a bad piece of work, and we 
send it back on her hands. Does this seem to be 
trifling with the sacredness of human life? But the 
Author of Nature does not, apparently, consider human 
life too sacred or inviolate. What God seems to be 
resolved on is to have his own way, to carry out his 
own plans ; and he does have his own way, and he does 



THE SIGHING OF THE PRISONER. 367 

carry out his own plans, though thousands fall at our 
side, and ten thousand at our right hand. Gases will 
explode, and waterspouts must burst, and gravitation 
hold good, though families are overwhelmed, and cities 
perish. I do not quarrel with this. I admit that 
God's way and God's plans are the best. I only say 
that always and everywhere he makes individual life 
subordinate to general law. More than this, he does 
not consider human life too sacred to be put into 
human hands. Man gives, and, to a very large extent, 
man takes away. If poor little Kitty Curran's life 
was not too sacred for Jesse Pomeroy to take, surely 
Jesse Pomeroy's life is not too sacred for society to 
take, in preservation of all the little Kittys who are 
not yet buried under his ash-heap. Human life, the 
human soul, is sacred, — too sacred to be profaned by 
such travesties as Jesse Pomeroy and Henrietta 
Waibel and the Westborough reform scholar. If some 
imperfect, distorted, or mischievous coin comes from 
the mint, we send it back to be recoined, without 
misgiving. It is not that we undervalue, but that we 
rightly value, the worth of money. Through some- 
body's violation of the law, which is holy and just and 
good, these unhappy children are in the world, defec- 
tive, distorted, monstrous, fatal. They can never 
have any fair showing here. They are weighted with 
incapacity and with crime. The law has provided a 



368 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

way by which we may make it possible for the divine 
Being to give them a better start ; and they certainly 
cannot have a worse one. Divested of the burden of 
weakness, or vice, or brain-disease which disabled them 
here, they may be born again in some other world as 
pure and perfect as the happy infants of this. This, 
of course, is the merest possible conjecture ; but they 
should certainly have the chance. 

But the main object is to keep down the crop of 
little monsters that seem to be springing up in the 
wake of Jesse Pomeroy. Henrietta Waibel may not 
have been to blame for her mania ; and we may none 
of us understand, or make proper allowance, for the 
powerful nature of that mania ; but if, while we are 
striving to make it out, it is thoroughly understood 
that society has a mania for hanging all little girls and 
boys who have a mania for murdering other little girls 
and boys, we shall be likely to keep the mania under till 
such time as we shall be able to repress it altogether. 
I have never been able to persuade myself that the 
Salem witchcraft was wholly an intentional fraud ; but 
I do believe, that if the young people whose antics 
brought it to a head had been soundly punished, with- 
out reason, or argument, or mercy, every time they 
showed the first symptom of floundering into fits, 
instead of being coddled and cosseted, they would 
have been speedily brought to their senses. Whatever 



THE SIGHING OF THE PRISONER. 369 

devil was at the bottom of it would have been suc- 
cinctly driven out ; and good old Rebecca Nourse would 
have died in her bed, full of years and honors. In 
like manner, while we are, as is proper, investigating 
the moral status of these young monsters, defining 
the cause and end of their being, divesting them, so 
far as may be, of their guilt, and relegating them to the 
divine compassion, I would at the same time have it 
deeply impressed upon the public mind that moral 
guilt and legal guilt are wholly different things ; that 
children who murder their playmates for fun shall be 
just as surely hung as if they did it for greed, anger, 
or revenge ; that, the younger they are when they de- 
liberately and consciously kill, the more hopeless is it 
to try to make them over, and the more imperative is 
it to take the first step to their reform by sending them 
out of a world where such temptations assail them. 

The right or the wrong, the wisdom or the unwisdom, 
of capital punishment, does not, however, enter into 
this question, except by courtesy. It is a question of 
the might and majesty of law. It is whether the law, 
or the opinion of a few persons concerning the law, is 
the stronger, the more powerful, the more worthy of 
respect. The time may come when we shall consider 
capital punishment a relic of barbarism ; but it is not 
yet so considered. We are to act, not according to a 
standard of civilization which may be set up a hun- 



370 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

died years from to-day, but according to the standard 
of to-day. To-day capital punishment, imprisonment 
for life, imprisonment for longer or shorter terms, 
are the penalties appointed by our highest legal 
authorities for certain crimes. There are equally 
authoritative modes for administering these punish- 
ments. Are these laws to be executed, or are they 
to be set aside on purely sentimental or positively 
immoral pretexts ? The severity of the laws is not in 
question : if it were, we might say that one assault 
with intent to kill is enough to condemn a man to 
restraint for the rest of his life ; that unconditional 
liberty after a second similar assault is an outrage 
upon the honest and peaceable ; that it is only, if at 
all, less than murder in the first degree to send a man 
who has twice attempted the life of his fellows forth 
upon the world, after four and a half years of con- 
finement, to beat down to agony and defilement and 
death a helpless and unoffending woman. 

It is simply this : if the law has any dignity, let it be 
executed. If it has none, let it be repealed, but let it 
not be tampered with. Capital punishment may or 
may not be wise ; but so long as it is the punishment 
prescribed by the law, for murder, let it be enforced. 
Imprisonment may or may not be wise ; but, so long as 
it is the law of the land, let it be inflicted in exactly 
such measure as the law imposes, and not be curtailed 



THE SIGHING OF THE PRISONER. 371 

or meddled with by irresponsible agents. Theorists 
may think, that, because a man is orderly under con- 
finement, he will be orderly when set at liberty ; but 
they should be refrained from trying the experiment on 
their own account. There is no clamor for blood ; 
there is no frenzy for revenge : but there is the cry 
of weakness for protection, of suffering for justice, of 
assailed innocence for the law inviolable and inviolate. 



FAIR PLAY. 




FAIR PLAT. 

|0 extol the weakness of the strong as strength 
is as injurious as to make a mock at sin. 
To overlay Nature with religious phraseology 
is not to regenerate or to consecrate Nature. 

In a little book published by the Tract Society, 
called "Lady Huntingdon and her Friends," there is 
a remarkable commingling and confusion of the fruits 
of the Spirit and the fruits of the flesh. 

For instance, an extract is made from a letter of 
the " unhappy Lady Marlborough." 

" Your concern for rny religious improvement is very obli- 
ging. God knows we all need mending, and none more than 
myself. ... I have no comfort in my own family ; and, when 
alone, my reflections almost kill me, so that I am forced to fly to 
the society of those whom I detest and abhor. Now, there is 
Lady Frances Sanderson's great rout to-morrow night. ... I 
do hate that woman as much as I hate a physician ; but I must 
go, if for no other purpose but to mortify and spite her. This 
is very wicked, I know." 

"This, then," moralizes the biographer, " tears 
away the trappings of wealth and station, and startles 

375 



376 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

us by a sight of the bad passions which lie cankering 
beneath. Let it be contrasted with the freshness and 
beauty of the believer's life." 

" What blessed effects does the love of God pro- 
duce in the hearts of those who abide in him ! " writes 
Lady Huntingdon to Charles Wesley. " How solid is 
the peace, and how divine the joy ! " &c. 

But, as we go on in the book, we find that these 
very hearts display qualities more akin to those of the 
unhappy Lady Marlborough than this solid peace and 
joy. The Dissenting churches received the new 
preachers with indifference and bitterness. Doddridge 
was severely censured by his brethren. Angry and 
threatening letters were sent to him from various 
quarters. Then the new preachers themselves began 
to quarrel. " The breach widened between Wesley 
and Whitefield," says the biographer; " for on both 
sides there were friends and followers who fanned the 
flame. . . . Their counsels divided, and their ranks 
broken, there seemed to be a weak betrayal of their 
Master's cause." "A bitter household squabble," 
the contest is called. When the churches in connec- 
tion with Mr. Wesley held their twenty-seventh annual 
conference in London, it " gave birth to a controversy, 
perhaps one of the hottest, and most barren of spoils, 
in the annals of Protestant theology. It was a kin- 
dling of the old flames that so nearly consumed the 



FAIR PLAY 377 

friendship of Wesley and Whitefield more than twenty 
years before." Lady Huntingdon took sides " with an 
honest though hasty warmth." u However powerful 
may have been the arguments wielded on either side, 
tools, also, of a sharper point were freely used. Acri- 
monious and intemperate expressions were hurled back 
and forth. Both parties, instead of convincing or re- 
treating, were driven to the extremes of their own prin- 
ciples, and made unguarded assertions of themselves 
and their opponents, the effect of which was to alien- 
ate the hearts of Christian brethren, . . . and^widen 
the breach between those who really loved the Lord." 

Nor were Lady Huntingdon's differences with her 
friends limited to theological matters. When Row- 
land Hill started in his career, she " received the 
ardent and self-forgetting young man with an open 
heart, and gave him a cordial welcome beneath her 
roof. Subsequently a coolness seems to have sprung 
up between them. Though mutually respecting each 
other, and mutually wishing each other God-speed in 
separate paths of usefulness, they do not appear to 
have wrought harmoniously together." In short, not 
to put too fine a point on it, Lady Huntingdon abso- 
lutely refused to let him preach in her chapel. 

Now, I submit that it is entirely unfair to set over 
against Lady Marlborough's frank and witty badinage 
the cheap, pious reflections of Lady Huntingdon. I 

32* 



378 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

say cheap, because the}' are worth absolutely nothing 
but the paper and ink they are' written with. The 
proper comparison is not between the bad passions of 
the world and the freshness and beauty of the 
believer's life, but between the bad passions of the 
world and the bad passions of the believer. To take 
the world at its bad, and the Church at its best, will 
never give us just views. Yet, so far as we see from 
this book, it is the only way to give the Church the 
desired superiority. I cannot see that tearing away 
the trappings of wealth and station reveals the 
cankering of worse passions than a tearing-away of 
the trappings of ecclesiasticism and theology. Lady 
Marlborough's simple hatred of Lady Frances Sander- 
son seems no deeper or more bitter than the twenty- 
years' quarrel of the churches over divine sovereignty 
and electing grace. Lady Marlborough calls a spade 
a spade; while the religious biographer calls it "an 
acrimonious and intemperate expression." I confess 
I like the spade best. Can wealth and station do an}' 
worse thing than make " unguarded assertions of them- 
selves and their opponents " ? They would proba- 
bly call it by the ugly names of tying and slander ; 
but it would be very much the same thing at bottom. 
Lady Marlborough hated Lady Frances, but went to 
her rout, and, no doubt, spake her peaceably. 
Whitefield and Wesley "loved each other;" but 



FAIR PLAT. 379 

their "friendship" was "clouded;" and Whitefield 
wrote in a "recriminating tone," and Wesley took 
possession of Whitefield's Kings wood School, and 
drove his "spiritual children" into "a temporary 
shed" for shelter. One said, I will not, but after- 
wards he repented and went; and the other said, I 
go, sir, and went not. The world's hatred cankers 
no more than the Church's love. If you are reckless, 
implacable, slanderous, what difference does it make 
whether you are quarrelling over divine sovereignty, 
or ball-room precedence ? 

On one occasion, Lady Huntingdon sent for a dis- 
tinguished revival preacher to spend a few weeks in 
her " fields." His reply is any thing but complimen- 
tary to his flock, any thing but indicative of blessed 
effects in their hearts. 

" I am determined," he says, " not to quit my 
charge again in a hurry. Never do I leave my bees 
(though for a short space, only), but, on my return, I 
find them either casting, or colting, or fighting, and 
robbing each other ; not gathering honey from every 
flower of God's garden, but filling the air with their 
buzzings, and darting out the venom of their little 
hearts in their fiery stings. Nay, so inflamed they 
often are, and a mighty little thing disturbs them, 
that three months' tinkling afterward with a warming- 
pan will scarce hive them at last, and make them 
settle to work again." 



380 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

Certainly the Duchess of Marlborough does not 
show off badly against the freshness and beauty of 
these believers' life. 

No one disputes that Lady Huntingdon and her 
friends were sincere Christians, and served God, and 
wrought righteousness, in their day and generation ; 
and if their biographers would be content with point- 
ing out the good they attained and executed, we would 
not complain, even though their defects were hidden. 
But when their imperfections are softened with sacred 
phrase, and the imperfections of the world set forth in 
glaring colors, the instinctive sense of justice rises in 
revolt. Not by such help is the kingdom of God to 
be advanced. 

Lady Huntingdon and her chaplains, says her biog- 
rapher, often journeyed during the summer, making 
their presence a means of religious revival wherever 
they went. " There is something grand and beautiful 
in the laborious and unselfish ministrations of the band 
of preachers who thus went out into the highways and 
hedges of England, publishing the gospel message as 
if fresh from Christ and Calvary." One of these jour- 
neys, "though undertaken for the countess's health, 
seems really to have been a home-missionary tour. 
Returning again to society, Lady Huntingdon may be 
seen journeying through "Wales. . . . Is it a jaunt of 
pleasure, a tour of aimless excitement, a seeing of new 



FAIR PLAY. 381 

things for the sake of killing time ? We now find her 
travelling in different countries, following up with 
her presence the labors of her missionaries, inspecting 
her chapels, investigating the doings of trustees and 
committees, regulating salaries, directing funds, coun- 
selling, controlling, and encouraging, with an unspent 
force of mind which was marvellous to behold." 

What we wish to get at, in all history, personal and 
national, is things as they are. That Lady Huntingdon 
was a woman of remarkable energy, ability, and excel- 
lence ; born for command, and not for subordination ; 
of a masculine force of character, not to be suppressed 
even by English conventionality ; of an executive 
ability, guided by Christian principle, and seldom sur- 
passed either in man or woman, — this book indicates, 
and these journeys illustrate. But that there was any 
thing noticeably unselfish in the ministrations of this 
band of preachers, that there was any self-denial in 
these home-missionar}' tours, that they were, in any 
respect, not jaunts of pleasure, it is difficult to see. 
They were something besides pleasure-tours ; but 
surely they were pleasure-tours. The biographer, 
unconsciously no doubt, uses the common u question 
fallacy " in the form of interrogation, as if a pleasure- 
tour and a tour for killing time were one and the same 
thing. But let us look at Lady Huntingdon's journeys. 
" The party is large, composed of her two daughters, 



382 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

her sisters (Anne and Frances Hastings), several 
clerg3 r men, and other religious friends." One of these 
clerg3Tnen was Griffith Jones, a popular preacher, 
whose " very presence was like the ringing of the 
sabbath-bells for the people to come and hear." 
Another was Howell Harris, so popular that he had to 
form his followers into societies. Another of her 
clique was Whitefield, who could hardly make his 
way along the crowded aisles to the reading-desk, an^d 
who had to leave Bristol secretly, in the middle of the 
night, to avoid the ceremony of being escorted by 
horsemen and coaches, and whom crowds went to hear 
so early in the morning that the streets were filled 
with people carrying lanterns, — a man of remarkable 
grace, fair complexion, dark-blue eyes, and uncommon 
sweetness both of voice and countenance. Would a 
journey with such a party make a special draught 
upon disinterestedness? On their preaching- tours, 
these men, and such as these, addressed immense 
crowds from all the country round about. So far from 
requiring unselfishness, this jaunting was exactly what 
Lady Huntingdon liked. She had her family, her 
friends, her ministers ; and she ruled the whole cara- 
van. She was the mother-superior. She was to them 
" good Lad}' Huntingdon." They stole her hymns 
and sang them. They drank her health. They 
sounded and resounded her praises. They preached in 



FAIR PLAY. 383 

her parlors. They took orders from her and reported 
progress to her. A jaunt of pleasure, indeed ! Im- 
agine a handsome, high-spirited, well-born American 
widow, of ample means and fine mind, making up a 
part}' to the Yellowstone. She invites, first, her pretty 
and agreeable daughters ; then her sisters, who have 
been belles and beauties in their day and are still held 
in high consideration ; then, let us say, Prof. Barbour, 
unhappily now of Bangor, to the long lament of 
Massachusetts ; and Mr. George Field, snatched also 
from Boston to the benighted realms of Maine ; and 
Dr. Swing, and Mr. Beecher ; and as many other 
friends as she likes ; and she keeps them all well in 
hand : and we talk of unselfishness. They may preach 
seven times a week, or seventy times seven, and call it 
a missionary tour, if it so pleases them ; but their rose 
by any other name is just as sweet. Lady Huntingdon 
loved large affairs. She loved to organize and super- 
intend and direct. She loved company and excite- 
ment and respect and deference. She could not 
content herself with the quiet, humdrum domestic and 
social life which occupies most women, and with which 
many women are forced to be content. Like the 
resolute, capable, and virtuous, nay, splendid woman 
that she was, she moulded life to her likings as well 
as her uses : she found a sphere for her powers : she 
ordered men about in a way that it is refreshing to 



384 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

read of. She fulfilled her mission ; but she fulfilled it 
exactly as Charlotte Bronte fulfilled hers when she 
wrote "Jane Eyre," and as Mrs. Siddons fulfilled 
hers on the stage, and Christine Mllsson hers with her 
voice, and another woman hers in the forever unveiled 
seclusion of her kitchen and nursery. I see no more 
reason for attributing unselfishness and denjing pleas- 
ure to Lady Huntingdon than to Jenny Lind. To go 
off on a journey with her family and friends, and half 
a dozen popular preachers, all training in her company, 
is a cross which the most selfish woman would gladly 
take up. We have only to look upon Lady Hunting- 
don and her people as human beings, who were hungry 
and thirsty, and gay and gallant, as well as pious ; 
who were perfectly familiar with the advantages of 
good birth and "breeding, as well as of gospel privi- 
leges, — and all things become simple and natural. 
They were no anchorites ; for at Mr, Nimmo's they 
drank her health every day ; and that means wines and 
meats and desserts and luxurious living. No doubt 
the Ladies Hastings " hungered for the living manna," 
and the preacher's " words fell upon good ground," 
and Lady Margaret ' ' embraced the truth as it is in 
Jesus ; " but, all the same, it remains that the preach- 
er's marriage with the earl's daughter was a very 
brilliant match for him ; and there is no doubt that the 
Eev. Benjamin Ingham saw it just as plainly, and 



FAIR PLAT. 385 

enjoyed his courtship just as young-manfully, as if he 
had not been "leading her to the Saviour" while 
leading her to himself. 

The laborious and unselfish ministrations of these 
peripatetic preachers do not seem to me one-half so 
striking, so laborious, or so unselfish, as the minis- 
trations of those preachers who stay at home. Nov- 
elty, excitement, irresponsibility, adulation, even op- 
position, stimulate them. But to stay in one place, 
among people who are perfectly used to you, and ham- 
mer away at the same old sins, with the same old 
truths, and yet strike fire, — that is work. 

Let us call things by their right names. We do 
what we like, and it is not self-denying because it hap- 
pens to be beneficial. The choice we make is not 
unselfish because it pleases others, any more than it is 
selfish because it pleases ourselves. 

" Lady Huntingdon," says her biographer, "had 
been exemplary as a wife and mother, and free from 
the corruptions of fashionable society," even before 
she became technically a Christian. 

We must not corrupt society, even for the sake of 
making a foil to Lady Huntingdon's purity. At the 
age of twenty-one she was married to the Earl of 
Huntingdon, who is mentioned as u a man of high and 
exemplary character." "He was sincere, just, and 
upright: he was courteous, considerate, and chari- 
33 



SERMONS TO THE CLERGY, 

table. ... In the stately household, no earthly good 
was withholden, nor were earthly blessings abused by 
riot or excess. Dignity, sobriety, and refinement 
presided over the homes and halls of the earl. Lord 
Huntingdon had several sisters, whose thoughtful cast 
of mind made them particularly welcome to his house. 
In them Lady Huntingdon had found kindred spirits. 
The earl was a man of unblemished character ; and, 
though not a believer in the distinctive theology of his 
wife, he courteously entertained her religious friends." 
Here then was a whole family (and the only 
family to whom we are fairly introduced) in the first 
and most fashionable circles, maintaining as good a 
reputation as it is possible to find in the most devout 
of religious circles. Whatever we may say about frames 
of mind, states of heart, words of the lips, no one 
can be any thing better than sincere, just, upright, 
courteous, considerate, charitable, exemplary. As we 
meet incidentally other members of this same fashion- 
able society, we are not altogether unfavorably im- 
pressed. They thronged her house to hear Whitefield 
preach, and, having heard him once, desired to come 
again. Lord Bolingbroke was moved, and asked 
Whitefield to come and see him the next morning; 
and u Whitefield used the current compliments of 
address common to that period, — more fulsome then 
than now." Lord Bolingbroke " heartily despised the 



FAIR PLAT. 387 

gospel, yet affected to reverence it ; " which was cer- 
tainty good-humored and civil. He also u desires his 
compliments and thanks to Dr. Doddridge, and hopes 
he shall continue to deserve his good opinion. " 

So it seems he had deserved it. Lord Huntingdon, 
the son, had a dislike to religion ; but he was " most 
tender, respectful, and kind to his mother," as well as 
"interesting, elegant, and accomplished" in corrupt 
society. Lord Chesterfield used a "polished sarcasm" 
toward the faith ; but he offered his chapel to Lady 
Huntingdon's chaplain during their summer tours ; and, 
" at Lady Huntingdon's solicitations, he often contrib- 
uted to the cause of Christ," though it would seem as 
if delicacy could not have asked him to contribute to 
a cause in which he did not believe. Surely here 
the worldly gentleman shows to better advantage than 
the Christian lady. u He had been the early friend 
and companion of Earl Huntingdon, after whose death 
he seems always to have remained on a friendly foot- 
ing with the countess. Toward the young earl we 
find him acting as toward an adopted son, — a circum- 
stance which Lady Huntingdon is presumed not to 
have been able to control, and which must have 
occasioned her no little sorrow." 

Not quite so fast, if you please, worthy biographer. 
Your facts and j r our presumptions, and your forced 
inferences, are commingled too precipitately. It was, 



388 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

surely, not a bad trait, even in a" corrupt" man, to 
act the part of father to his dead friend's son. Nor 
was Lady Huntingdon, with all her devotion, in the 
least insensible to the advantages of birth and position. 
She and Mr. Whitefield were quite aware when the 
"great ones" heard them patiently. She got her 
daughter a place at court ; and her subsequent marriage 
to the Earl of Moira " seems to have given much 
satisfaction." Another daughter's honor, in being 
appointed one of six to help Princess Augusta bear the 
train of Queen Charlotte on her coronation day, was 
sufficiently appreciated to pass into history. Her 
marriage with Col. George Hastings was much ap- 
proved by her mother ; and at Paris the eldest son, 
just become of age, u is warmly greeted by the most 
distinguished English residents, particularly, intro- 
duced, as he is, by Lord Chesterfield." With Lord 
Chesterfield remaining on friendly terms with Lady 
Huntingdon all his life, and paying her compliments, 
and at her solicitation, and in most polite phrase, 
contributing to her cause, in which he had no faith, I 
see not a particle of evidence that his friendship to her 
son was to the mother a source of sorrow, or a thing 
which she had any wish to hinder. 

Other most exemplary friends of Lady Huntingdon 
in this corrupt, fashionable society seem to have been 
Lord and Lady Glenarchy, "just returned from the 



FAIR PLAY. 389 

gayeties and excitement of a Continental tour," and 
Lord and Lady Sutherland, of whom Lady Huntingdon 
says, " Never have I seen a more lovely couple. 
Although they have not yet been led to ! the fountain 
of living waters,' they may, indeed, with justice, be 
called the flower of Scotland." 

In short, while we declaim, in general terms, on the 
frivolity and vanity of fashionable society, a close 
acquaintance with it reveals about the same proportion 
of excellence that is found in any society. As we meet 
its members in these pages, they by no means bear out 
the charge of corruption so lightly and easily made. 

Let us glance at the societ}- of Lady Huntingdon's 
liking. " Her princely mansions were open with a 
tireless hospitality to every one who loved her Lord." 
But is that the true principle of hospitality? "If ye 
love them which love you, what reward have ye?" 
This is not a strict statement of fact ; but it is as 
pertinent as if it were. Lady Huntingdon did open 
her house to those who did not love her Lord ; but her 
biographer seems not to think that counts for any thing 
in the general summing-up. " During the lifetime of 
the earl, Lady Huntingdon's time was necessarily 
engrossed by many cares, which withheld her from the 
friends and the interests which lay nearest her heart." 
But what right had she, the wife of a man of un- 
blemished character and chivalrous courtesy, to any 

33* 



390 SEBMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

friends nearer her heart than her husband, to any 
interests more close than his? A pretty religion that, 
in whose path a high-minded husband is a hinderance ! 
" As mistress of his princely mansion, she had duties 
to general society which could not be slighted. 
Respect and affection for him controlled her private 
preferences ; and, without making her disloyal to her 
religious convictions, blended her interests with his 
own. The tie is now broken; . . . and henceforth 
we find unfolding that lofty energy of character which 
has identified her name with the revived Christianity 
of her day." A revival, it is significant to remember, 
in which her husband and her son did not share. 

And how did Lady Huntingdon reconstruct society 
when her husband was no longer alive to restrain the 
indulgence of her private preferences? Chiefly on 
a basis of preaching, one would say. Certainly the 
amount she underwent was appalling. Not content 
with her tours and her chapels, she was constantly hav- 
ing sermons in her own house. " Ashby Place," one 
of her homes, writes Whitefield, " is like a bethel. 
We have the sacrament every morning, heavenly con- 
versation all day, and preaching all night." There is 
no disputing about tastes ; but certainly this seems too 
much of a good thing for a steady, well-balanced life. 
Surely any conversation carried on all daj^, and day 
after day, would cease to be heavenly. With "five 



FAIR PLAT. 391 

clergymen beneath her hospitable roof," and an indefi- 
nite number of dear Lady Fannys and Amies and 
Bettj^s, they appear all to have been in a state of un- 
mitigated happiness. Women are good by nature, and 
clergymen are good by grace ; but it seems as if their 
religion would have been more nervous, sinewy, and 
commanding, more effective, perhaps, upon the hus- 
band and son, if a few brawny sinners had been let in 
upon them, speaking the language of the world, the 
flesh, and the devil, and permitting, not to say com- 
pelling, religion and infidelity to put off their fine 
array, and meet in a real hand-to-hand combat. But 
the church sang songs over the harpsichord, and talked 
heavenly talk all day in the drawing-rooms ; and the 
world indulged in "polished sarcasm" and "severe 
denunciation ' ' outside ; and both interchanged fulsome 
personal compliment ; and c ; Lord Huntingdon died as 
he had lived ; " and around the dying moments of Lord 
Chesterfield " the blackness of darkness, accompanied 
by every gloom}- horror, thickened most awfully ; " and 
Horace Walpole scoffed to the bitter end. 

With a resolute endeavor to have the sheep distinctly 
arranged on one side, and the goats on the other, even 
in this world, Lady Huntingdon's biographer tells us, 
that, in 1773, she " lost two friends with whom she had 
been long and differently associated, — that indefatiga- 
ble servant of God, Howell Harris,' ' and, as Wesley 



392 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

would call him, that servant of the Devil, Lord Ches- 
terfield. The biographer is not content to compare 
the lives of these two men, but dutifully and formally 
follows the footsteps of Lady Huntingdon, and con- 
trasts their deaths as an argument regarding their 
creeds. Let us, therefore, look at it a little more 
closely. 

"That indefatigable servant of God," writes Lady 
Huntingdon to Romaine, "Howell Harris, fell asleep in 
Jesus last week. When he was confined to his bed, 
and could no longer preach or exhort, he said, ' Blessed 
be God, my work is done, and I know that I am going 
to my God and Father, for he hath my heart, yea, my 
whole heart. Glo^ be to God ! death hath no sting ; 
all is well.' And thus this good man went home to 
his rest. 

u In contrast with the death of Howell Harris stands 
that of Lord Chesterfield. ' Death ' he declared to be 
' a leap in the dark ; ' and dark and dreadful did he 
find the leap to be. As the pains of dissolving nature 
increased upon him, and human help was vain, his cold 
and mocking scepticism could offer neither present 
alleviations nor future hope. ' The blackness of dark- 
ness, accompanied hj every gloomy horror, thickened 
most awfully around his dying moments/ says Lady 
Huntingdon.' ' 

But what is the biographer's authority for her state- 



FAIR PLAT. 393 

ments? and what is Lady Huntingdon's idea of 
horror? I distrust both as witnesses. Both seem to 
judge by shibboleth. I find no account of Lord 
Chesterfield's death-bed shrouded in gloomy horror, 
except in Lady Huntingdon's letter. Lord Mahon 
says he " retained his presence of mind to his latest 
breath. . . . His dissolution had not been thought so 
close at hand ; and his intimate friend, Mr. Day- 
rolles, had called to see him only half an hour before 
it happened ; when the earl from his bed gasped out, 
in a faint voice, to his valet-de-chambre, ' Give Day- 
rolles a chair? His physician, Dr. Warren, who was 
present afterward, expressed himself as much struck 
at these the last words he was heard to speak. * His 
good breeding,' said Dr. Warren, ' only quits him 
with his life.'" 

It seems to me that Lady Huntingdon unconsciously 
transferred to Lord Chesterfield her own feeling about 
him, and attributes to him the sensations she imagines 
she should herself feel, were she, with her convictions, 
in his situation ; which is not unnatural, but is cer- 
tainly not biographical. Apart from the fact that he 
could not frame to pronounce her shibboleth, the polite 
lord's death-bed does not contrast unfavorably with the 
Christian minister's. The latter is chiefly concerned 
with himself: the former cares for the comfort of his 
friend. But kindly service is as likely to contain 



394 SEJRMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

the essence of Christian religion as the most fluent 
self-gratulation. It may be said that Mr. Harris had 
more cause for self-gratulation than had Lord Chester- 
field. Mr. Harris was a preacher, and, if we may- 
believe his admirers, was a faithful and effective 
preacher. Of his private life we know little or noth- 
ing, nor of his public life any thing not told by his 
admirers. Lord Chesterfield is held up to view by 
friend and foe ; yet, in spite of all his faults, we find 
him in his will, finished on the February preceding his 
death in June, writing, "I most humbly recommend 
my soul to the extensive mercy of that Eternal, 
Supreme, Intelligent Being who gave it me, most 
earnestly, at the same time, deprecating his justice.' ' 
I do not find Lord Chesterfield's humility less impres- 
sive than Howell Harris's confidence. 

For his life-work we are told, that in the outset, in 
his first embassy to Holland, he displayed great skill, 
and attained universal reputation ; that his second 
embassy confirmed and renewed the praises he had 
acquired by the first ; that Sir Watkin Wynn, though 
neither his partisan nor personal friend, said that he 
" had a head to contrive, a tongue to persuade, and a 
hand to execute, any worthy action ; " that his career 
deserves the praise of humane, liberal, and far-sighted 
policy. After the rebellion, while all his colleagues 
thought only of measures of repression, the dungeon, 



FAIR PLAY. 395 

or the scaffold, disarming-acts and abolition-acts, 
Chesterfield was for schools and villages to civilize the 
Highlands. His course as Lord-lieutenant of Ireland 
was brilliantly useful. He was the first since the revo- 
lution who made that office a post of active exertion. 
He left nothing undone, nothing for others to do. He 
was the first to introduce at Dublin the principle of 
impartial justice. He proscribed no one, and was gov- 
erned by none. His measures were so able, he so 
clearly impressed upon the public mind that his moder- 
ation was not weakness, nor his clemency cowardice, he 
so well knew how to scare the timid, and conciliate the 
generous, that he soothed even the turbulence of Ire- 
land into a greater tranquillity than her settled and 
orderly periods often show. His administration was so 
wise and just, that his authority was appealed to, even 
by those who departed most widely from his maxims ; 
and his name lives in the honored remembrance of the 
Irish people, as, perhaps, next to Ormond, the best and 
worthiest in their long vice-regal line. 

These are the statements of a biographer who has a 
clear eye for Lord Chesterfield's defects, — so clear, 
indeed, that he impugns his motives, and neutralizes 
the virtue of his acts by ascribing them all to selfish- 
ness. Nevertheless, it remains that his public career, 
with which alone we are concerned, was as honorable 
as that of Howell Harris, and I think it is not too 



396 SEBMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

much to say more difficult and distinguished. So far 
as his life-work is concerned, he would have been as 
much justified as Howell Harris in looking back with 
exultation, and forward with confidence. Nor is it at 
all certain that Mr. Harris was more free from the 
errors of his profession and position than was Lord 
Chesterfield from his. Had Mr. Harris been as frank 
or as penetrating as Lord Chesterfield ; had he been as 
keen, as analytic, and as fearless ; did we know as 
much about the private life of the one as of the other, 
— we should be far better able to j)ronounce judgment 
than we now are. Mr. Harris is not to be absolved by 
reason of his freedom from Lord Chesterfield's sins, 
but by his power of resistance to his own temptations, 
of which we know nothing. 

But whatever may have been the life of these men, 
their death does not prove, on the one side, the truth of 
the Christian religion, nor, on the other, the fragility of 
scepticism. We may admit that they died as they 
lived ; and it only remains that the minister talked 
exultantly of himself, of what he had done, and what 
he was to receive ; and the nobleman was to the last 
courteous and considerate, — not flippantly and jesting- 
ly so, like Charles the Second, but with that instinct 
of politeness which is scarcely to be distinguished from 
the Golden Rule of Christ. Lord Chesterfield lived in 
a society which does not think it good manners to talk 



FAIR PLAT, 397 

much about yourself, or to display your feelings. 
Howell Harris lived in a society which cultivates ego- 
tism as a Christian duty. Each, in truth, died as he 
had lived. 'Mr. Harris may have been the happier 
man. Self-contemplation may be a more satisfactory 
thing than consideration for others. Rapturous antici- 
pation of the glories of the next world is a thrilling 
and impressive experience, compared to which a quiet 
performance of the little duties of this is but common- 
place. To feel that you are deservedly a favorite of 
the Almighty, and have a reserved seat in heaven, must 
give a far more jubilant sensation than humbly to cast 
yourself upon the divine mercy with a sense of ill- 
dersert. So much we can allow. Beyond this we may 
not go. A conjecture cannot be permitted to do duty 
as a fact. Edifying as it would be to paint Lord 
Chesterfield's departure from the world in the most 
horrid tints, much as the cause of Christ will lose if he 
be allowed to depart in peace, we must not gloss over 
the truth, but measure the gloom and horror of his 
death-bed from the testimony of eye-witnesses, and not 
from Lady Huntingdon's imagination. 

The ladies of Lady Huntingdon's clique, we are 
told, had hard work to hold their own against the 
strong temptations presented by a frivolous court, a 
witty peerage, and a learned bench in favor of a for- 
mal religion. " Nothing but the 'joy of the Lord' 

34 



398 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

could have sustained them in such a sphere. Happi- 
ness in religion was the best security for their holiness. 
They could not be laughed out of a good hope through 
grace. . . . Neither the severe denunciations of War- 
burton or the polished sarcasm of Chesterfield could 
touch the consciousness of peace in believing, or of 
enjoyment in secret prayer, in the hearts of those 
peeresses who had found at the cross and the mercy- 
seat the happiness they had sought in vain from the 
world." 

As martyrdom, this makes but a poor showing, 
although it is the nearest the peeresses can get to 
martyrdom. Polished sarcasms can very well be 
borne when they are accompanied by hundred-dollar 
notes for the chapel satirized : at least, Lady Hunt- 
ingdon's long friendliness with the satirist proves that 
she thought so. Let us see whether "the severe 
denunciations of Warburton ' ' were wholly in the 
nature of persecution, or even of opposition to the 
gospel, and the enjoyment of secret prayer. 

Mr. Romaine was one of those travelling chaplains 
whose laborious and unselfish ministrations contained 
something grand and beautiful. Beautiful they un- 
doubtedly were to himself ; for not only was he of 
Lady Huntingdon's party, but Lady Margaret Hast- 
ings ' fi felt a cordial sympathy for Romaine in his 
London trials and reverses, and — and generously 
eked out his small income from her own purse.' ' 



FAIR PLAY. 399 

This unselfish, grand, and beautiful Mr. Romaine, 
travelling with Lady Huntingdon at Lady Margaret's 
expense, had been guilty of what the world called a 
shabby little trick toward Mr. Warburton. Mr. War- 
burton had published his " Divine Legation." Mr. 
Romaine preached against it a sermon, afterward 
published by Beltenham. About the time the sermon 
was preached, Mr. Romaine wrote to Mr. Warburton, 
and, professing to be his admirer and defender, 
obtained certain advantages, w r hich, when his sermon 
was published, excited Mr. Warburton' s great chagrin 
and displeasure. In his indignation, he published Mr. 
Romaine' s letter, with his own comments ; whereupon 
Mr. Romaine rushed into print to declare that Mr. 
Warburton might have made a better use of his 
capacity and learning than to think " he deserved, or 
that I meant in earnest, those compliments in the 
letter." But he, an entire stranger to Mr. Warbur- 
ton, had spoken to him of "your last excellent book. 
I had read it more than once w r ith a great deal of 
pleasure, and had ever admired your elegant style, 
great learning, and strength of argument, and had 
been used to hear the same praises from others." 
What is here to indicate that he w T as not in earnest? 
or that, either in writing the compliments, or in deny- 
ing their earnestness, he was not what Warburton calls 
him, — an u execrable scoundrel ' ' ? Even Beltenham, 



400 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

who published the sermon, so much disliked Romaine' s 
retort on Warburton, that, when Romaine took it to be 
printed, Beltenham replied, that "it was a knavish 
business, and he would have nothing to do with it." 
Think of that, and a publisher ! 

Of course, these little doublings and turnings did 
not prevent Mr. Romaine from being " a warm and 
intrepid champion of .the cross," or Lady Margaret 
from contributing her own purse to make him comfort- 
able, or the other peeresses from their peace in believ- 
ing ; but it ought to make us a little charitable toward 
poor, rough- tongued Warburton, even if his denuncia- 
tions were a little severe. And severe, indeed, it must 
have seemed to these high-bred ladies to hear their 
"dear Mr. Romaine" called "a blunderbuss" and 
" a poor devil!" 

It, no doubt, seemed to them severe to be classed 
with "idle fanatics;" but had not the indignant 
bishop some reason for his characterization ? What 
were the effects produced by the preaching of the men 
whom Lady Huntingdon countenanced and encouraged ? 
Mr. Berridge, her especial friend and correspondent, 
held forth to his congregation till they responded with 
shrieking and roaring and gasping, like people half 
strangled. Some fell down as dead. An able-bodied, 
fresh, healthy countryman dropped down with great 
violence, shaking the adjoining pews with his fall, and 



FAIR PLAT. 401 

lay kicking and stamping, ready to break the boards. 
Among the children was a boy eight years old, who 
roared above his fellows, with a face as reel as scarlet, 
as well it may have been. A stranger, well dressed, 
fell backward to the wall, then forward on his knees, 
roaring like a bull. One Thomas Skinner came for- 
ward, his large wig and hair coal-black, his face dis- 
torted beyond all description. He roared incessantly, 
throwing and clapping his hands together with his 
whole force. Several were terrified, and hastened out 
of his way. And no wonder. Presently he fell on 
his back, and lay roaring for hours. "Almost all," 
says the reporter naively, — " almost all on whom God 
laid his hand turned either very red, or almost black." 
These things did not disturb the peeresses ; but they 
did irritate the bishop, who, though not serene, was 
sensible. I do not find that he anywhere denounced 
secret prayer. What he did denounce was public 
roaring. He was willing to grant peace, but not 
tumult, in believing. Mr. Wesley condemned pru- 
dence as the mystery of iniquity and the offspring of 
hell, when the question was of preaching against the 
body of clergy to which he belonged. Is it strange or 
persecuting, that Mr. Warburton should have pounced 
upon him for counselling Whitefield that it was impru- 
dent to publish the letter against himself, or for pro- 
posing to meet another minister halfway, and offering 

34* 



402 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

never to preach publicly against Mr. G., if Mr. G. 
would promise never to preach against him ? 

Mr. Wesley thought and taught, that true religion 
did not consist in living harmless, using the means of 
grace, and doing much good, but in God's dwelling 
and reigning in the soul. But, if God's dwelling in 
the soul turns men black in the face, must not the 
bishop be pardoned, if he preferred the Gospel accord- 
ing to St. James to the Gospel according to St. John 
Wesley? The account of Lady Huntingdon and her 
friends is published by the American Tract Society ; 
but nine out of ten of the supporters of that society 
would utter just as severe denunciations of the pro- 
ceedings in question as did Bishop Warburton — if 
they knew how. It was not the frivolous court, the 
witt}^ peerage, the learned bench, that made the 
strongest temptation to a formal religion : it was 
the ignorance, the vulgarity, the boundless license of 
fanaticism, into which religion lapsed, when, rejecting 
forms, it rejected also decorum and decency. By his 
own confession, it tickled Whitefield's vanity to be 
mobbed ; but the man, who, in making proposals of 
marriage, could bless God that he was free from the 
foolish passion which the world calls love, deserved to 
have dead cats thrown at him. It is not necessary to 
suppose that these men were hypocrites ; but, in cer- 
tain respects, they lacked a perception of the relations 



FAIR PLAY. 403 

of things ; and it was this lack, as well as the purity 
of their doctrines, which provoked opposition. Indeed, 
Wesle3 r himself, in his mellow old age, considering the 
wrong-headedness of his earlier years, marvelled that 
the people had not stoned him. Formalism, minister- 
ing at the altar in priestly robes, is not religion ; but 
neither is fanaticism, kicking its heels against the 
pews, and roaring like bulls of Bashan : and, if peer- 
esses do not see it, let us be thankful that Chester- 
fields are raised up to level at it their polished spears 
of sarcasm, and Warburtons to bring down upon it 
their huge cleavers of indignation. To call these men 
hostile to religion because they saw and repelled the 
vagaries and extravagances of some of the preachers 
of religion, to condemn them without noticing the 
weakness and wickedness which elicited their disap- 
proval, is to falsify history, to misuse opportunitj T , and 
make the word of Gocl of none effect by our traditions. 
Lacty Huntingdon and her peeresses were good women ; 
but they would have been none the less good if they 
could have been touched by severe and deserved de- 
nunciation, by polished and rightly pointed sarcasm. 
A keener sense of the ridiculous, a stronger power of 
discrimination, would have made them no less single- 
hearted, and, one would say, more really efficient and 
influential. It was no credit to their penetration, that 
they flocked after their preachers through thick and 



404 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

thin, bleating as trustfully among the morasses of 
superstition and sensation and tergiversation as in 
the green pastures, and beside the still waters, of right- 
eousness. 

Mr. Venn, an amiable and excellent clergyman, lost 
an admirable wife, to whom he was much attached. 
But even in the midst of his tears for his unspeakable 
loss, so inalienable is the egotism of a certain type of 
piety, he had the composure to look through his fin- 
gers, as it were, and mark how his grief affected the 
beholders. " For his own cause, I cannot but conclude 
the Lord does it, since, immediately upon my unspeak- 
able loss, the opposers cried out, ' Oh ! now you will 
see what will become of his vauntings of the power of 
faith and the name of Jesus.' They knew our great 
happiness ; and they said, ' You will see your vicar 
just like any one of us in the same situation.' But 
my God heard and answered." 

That is, the wife died, that the Christian faith might 
be illustrated by her husband's resignation. Of course, 
no one can disprove this ; though the overwhelming 
probabilities are, that Mrs. Venn died in the simplest 
earthly manner, — of inherited or legitimately acquired 
disease ; but, surely, this habit of posing and living 
with a view to what other people think of you indi- 
cates and develops an unwholesome and unnatural 
character. In course of time Mr. Venn again became 



FAIR PLAY. 405 

engaged, and thus wrote to the lady, "Long was I 
very backward to think of entering again into the 
marriage-state, though so blessed in my first connec- 
tion ; but the gracious God, whom I serve, and whose 
I am, has provided for me one of his own elect." 

Did Mr. Venn suppose that God took any more 
interest in his love-affairs than in another man's, or 
that he brought about his marriage in any other way 
than he brings about all things, — by the use of the 
requisite means ? Is it piety that speaks of the Most 
High as a match-maker, and man a mere puppet in his 
hands, not using his own eyes to find his wife, but 
taking the one provided for him? How did Mr. Venn 
know that God had selected this woman to be his wife ? 
When Whitefield wanted to marry, he wrote to the 
lady's father, " I write only because I believe it is the 
will of God that I should alter my state ; but your 
denial will fully convince me that your daughter is 
not the person appointed by God for me." Very sen- 
sible in Mr. Whitefield. A flat refusal from a resolute 
father is certainly a strong indication of the Lord's 
will. Whitefield evidently had less faith in heavenly 
than in earthly revelations. He might be mistaken in 
interpreting the one ; but there was no doubt about the 
other. But this time the divine will was conveyed, 
not through the lips of the father, but of the daughter, 
which was even more decisive. If the trumpet of the 



406 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

Lord ever gives a certain sound, it is from the mouth 
of a determined woman saying 4 No ' to her suitor. 
After strong crying and tears at the throne of grace for 
direction, Whitefield married the Widow James of 
Abergavenny, " a despised follower of the Lanib." 
Before his child was born, he prophesied that it would 
be a boy, and become a preacher of the gospel. It 
proved a boy, but died in four months ; whereupon 
he philosophized that " Satan had been permitted to 
give him some wrong impressions, whereby he had 
misapplied several texts of Scripture.' ' Moreover, his 
marriage turned out not to be a happy one : so it seems 
that those who depend upon the Lord for wives are no 
better off than those who fall in love on their own 
account. And, on the whole, what reason is there for 
supposing that God supervised Mr. Whitefield's and 
Mr. Venn's courtship any more closely than Mr. 
Smith's or Mr. Brown's? 

Mr. Wesley seems to have been a more manly man 
than Whitefield, more human, more natural, less vain, 
worthy, indeed, of a happy domestic life ; yet he fared 
ill, fared especially and grievously ill, in his fortune 
with women. The nineteenth century has thus far 
developed nothing more farcical, more scandalous, 
more preposterous, than the loves of John Wesley. 
In his friendship for ".Miss Sophy," his heart was 
deeply enlisted. She was young, pretty, and intelli- 



FAIR PLAY. 407 

gent. He was thirty-five, handsome, well bred, and 
of genial manners. He was passionately fond of her ; 
and she liked him, and, doubtless, more than liked him. 
She dressed in white because it pleased him ; gnd, when 
he fell sick, she nursed him. It was the nicest little 
love-affair that could be dreamed of, with nothing in 
earth or heaven to hinder. But there is a third estate, 
which always finds some mischief still for idle hands 
to do ; and, in an evil moment, Mr. Wesley, instead 
of acting out of his own manly, loving heart, pro- 
pounded the matter to the bishop, and then to the 
elders of the church, through all of whom God com- 
manded him, he says, to pull out his right eye, meaning 
to give up Miss Sophy ; but, hesitating, Miss Sophy 
pulled it out herself by marrying another man. What 
pique of pride, what wounds of disappointed love, the 
young girl suffered, we can only divine ; but poor Wes- 
ley was sorely driven of the wind, and tossed. After 
he had incurred Miss Sophy's displeasure by listening 
to the Moravian adversaries, he could not bear the 
thought of separation from her, and begged her to 
break her rash engagement with the other man, and 
marry himself. After her hasty marriage, he could 
only comfort himself by the reflection, that he should 
have been so happy with her that he should have given 
up preaching. Poor dear! One pities him, in spite 
of all these hundred and fifty years. Doubtless, also, 



408 SERMON 8 TO THE CLERGY. 

it was some comfort, though a trifle spiteful, for him to 
write that her husband was "a person not remark- 
able for handsomeness, neither for greatness, neither 
for wit or knowledge or sense, and, least of all, for 
religion ; " and u presently God showed him yet more 
of the greatness of his deliverance by opening to him 
a new and unexpected scene of Miss Sophy's dissimu- 
lation." I do not feel so sure of that. Perhaps Miss 
Sophia would not have dissembled, if mischievous 
Moravian outsiders had not taken from her the hand- 
some, great, and wise man whom she loved, and piqued 
her to fling herself hastily into the arms of a man 
whom she can hardly be supposed to have loved. At 
any rate, Mr. Wesley was so hampered by the bonds 
of his church and his love, that he could neither 
marry her, nor let her alone ; and he was presently 
defendant in a scandal suit brought by Miss Sophia's 
husband, from which, after three months of waiting 
for trial, he escaped by hiring four renegade debtors 
to row him away in a boat by night. Whether God 
commanded him to plan this little escapade does not 
appear. 

Several years afterwards, the movings of the Spirit 
led him to Grace Murray, who also had nursed him 
when he was sick ; and again the Most High spoke 
through his brother Charles and Whitefield, for the 
excellent reason that she was already engaged to John 



FAIR PLAY. 409 

Bennett, one of his lay-preachers, whom she had 
nursed before Wesley fell ill. His brother and 
friends counselled her to keep to her engagement. 
Naughty John Wesley, did God command you to 
make love to another man's betrothed? He is excused, 
on the plea of not knowing that she was engaged to 
Bennett; but after Bennett and Grace wrote him a 
joint letter, asking his consent to their marriage, he 
must have suspected that all was not going smoothly 
with his suit. Still, as Mrs. Murray seems to have 
changed her mind with each change of lovers, perhaps 
Mr. Wesley is not much to be blamed for holding on. 
Doubtless, he thought he had as much right to win, 
and was as likely to win, as the other man. In the 
morning she told John Wesley she loved him a thou- 
sand times better than she ever loved John Bennett : 
in the evening she promised John Bennett to marry 
him. A week after she told Mr. Wesley she was 
determined to live and die with him, and wanted to 
be married at once. If Mr. Wesley could only have 
come up to the mark then, all might yet have been 
well ; but, madly enough, he wished some delay. 
Grace said she would not wait more than a year ; and 
she was as good as her word, for in three weeks she 
was married to Bennett. Then the defeated one in 
this game of see-saw thus bemoans himself, " Since 
I was six years old, I never met with such a severe 

35 



410 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

trial." He had forgotten that little operation of pull- 
ing out his right eye. " I thought I had made all 
sure, bej' ond a danger of disappointment. But we were, 
soon after, torn asunder as by a whirlwind. I fasted 
and prayed." But what was the good of fasting and 
praying after it was all over? How much better to 
have stepped up and married her when she was ready 
to his hand, and then have had a day of thanksgiving ! 
for, as she made an excellent wife to Bennett, she 
would, doubtless, have made an excellent one to 
Wesley. 

Mr. Bennett seems to have been a perfectly proper 
match for the lady, being a man of classical education, 
and superior native talents. It is just possible that he 
may not have been particularly pleased with this little 
episode ; and that his subsequent defection from the 
Wesleyan ranks, and his opposition to Wesley, may 
have been somewhat influenced by this bit of personal 
history. It is to be noticed, that, though Mr. Wesley 
submitted to the will of God and John Bennett, he 
was much offended with his brother Charles, who 
enforced it, and interfered against the match as soon 
as he found it out. 

Not only without were fightings, but within were 
fears. When Wesley had no inclination to marry, he 
had published a treatise in favor of " remaining single 
for the kingdom of heaven's sake." Now that his heart 



FAIR PLAY. 411 

was fully set on marrying, it was necessary for him to 
explain, that he only meant " to remain single for the 
kingdom of heaven's sake, unless when a particular 
case might be an exception to the general rule." 
Admirable distinction! And his was the particular 
case. 

He then gathered his friends together, and consulted 
them, and was clearly convinced that he ought to 
marry; which shows the remarkable reasoning power 
of his friends. He fully believed he " might be more 
useful in a married state, into which, upon this clear 
conviction, and by the advice of my friends, I entered 
a few days after." 

"But fixed before, and well resolved was he, 
As men who ask advice are wont to be.*' 

All this was accomplished in about a year after the 
whirlwind had torn him from Grace Murray. But I do 
not mind Grace Murray. She was a widow, and 
thirty-four, and abundantly able to take care of herself. 
It was pretty Sophy Hopkey in her white dress that he 
ought to have married, and kept from breaking her 
heart and his own in a fit of girlish pique. Such a 
bright, happy life she would have led him ! 

But there was the slippery bridge, and the sprained 
ankle, and the Widow Vazeille lying in wait to nurse 
him ; and it was all over with John Wesley. Surely, 



412 SEBMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

never had man more need, or less heed, of the warning 
of Mr. Weller, senior, to his son Sammy. In eight 
days from the sprained ankle, she and her four chil- 
dren were married to him. She robbed him; she 
wounded him ; she betrayed him ; she secretly spied 
upon him ; she searched his pockets ; she dragged him 
about by the hair, and pulled it out by the roots ; she 
published every thing which would bear a construction 
unfavorable to him, and accused him of deadly sin with 
the wife of his brother Charles. Verily, it was not so 
much of a deliverance, after all, — out of the hands 
of Miss Sophy into the hands of Mrs. Molly. Was 
this what the divine Being was aiming at? Verily, 
Miss Sophy had as much to console her in John 
Wesley's wife as John had in the contemplation of 
Miss Sophy's husband. All this did not prevent the 
wife's tombstone from eulogizing her as a woman of 
exemplary piety, a tender parent, and a sincere friend. 
But let us not be too harsh upon the dead lady, to 
whom her husband used to write, — 

"Be content to be a private, insignificant person, 
known and loved by God and me." 

" Leave me to be governed by God and my own con- 
science ; then shall I govern you with gentle sway." 

u Of what importance is your character to mankind? 
If you was buried just now, or if you had never 
lived, what loss would it be to the cause of God? " 



FAIR PLAT. 413 

11 Are you more humble, more gentle, more patient, 
more placable, than you was? I fear, quite the reverse. 
I fear 3-our natural tempers are rather increased than 
diminished." 

One wonders he had a hair left in his head ! 

Suppose, now, after reading such a letter as this to 
herself, one of the letters she found while searching 
Mr. Wesley's pockets happened to be this to Mrs. 
Sarah Ryan : — 

" The conversing with you, either by speaking or 
writing, is an unspeakable blessing to me. I cannot 
think of you without thinking of God. Others often 
lead me to him ; but it is, as it were, going roundabout : 
you bring me straight into his presence. ... I not 
only excuse, but love, your simplicity. . . . Upon what 
a pinnacle do you stand ! Perhaps few persons in 
England have been in so dangerous a situation as you 
are now. I know not whether any other was ever 
so regarded, both by my brother and me, at the 
same time." 

Being an unreasonable and jealous woman, the 
wonder is she left him his head ! 

And this Sarah Ryan, whose simplicity was so sweet 
to him, whose words were an unspeakable blessing, 
whose presence was the pathway to God, had been, 
like his wife, a servant. She left service to marry a 
mechanic who already had one wife. He ran away 

85 



414 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

from Sarah; and then she became engaged to an 
Italian sailor. Before the marriage she happened to 
nurse an Irish sailor named Ryan, with what appears 
to have been the usual result : she married him. He 
went to sea ; and she married the Italian until he came 
back ; and then she returned to Ryan, and lived with 
him till he w r ent to sea again. He wrote to her from 
America, wishing her to come over to him ; but she 
refused. And, with three husbands living, Wesley ap- 
pointed her housekeeper, or matron, in his theological 
school at Kingswood, and made her his intimate friend, 
and the confidante of his domestic troubles. And when 
they were all sitting comfortably at dinner, Wesley 
with his ministers, and Sarah at the head of the table, 
in burst the irate Mrs. Wesley upon them, hurling 
the coarsest insults at Mrs. Ryan, and narrating bits 
of her personal history to the astonished company. 

A hundred years and more have passed away ; and 
it may scarcely be said that stain or speck mars the 
white fame of Wesley. The vast majority who revere 
his memory know nothing of his w T hims or weakness, but 
only his energy, his zeal, his wonderful effectiveness, his 
marvellous power. This is as it should be. In this 
world our treasure must be put into earthen vessels. 
We are often indignant and disappointed to find it so. 
A man arises with some gift of song or speech, so bril- 
liant, so magnetic, that it lifts him above his fellows ; and 



FAIR PLAT. 415 

we would fain believe it is the voice of a god, and not of 
a man. But, in the common affairs of life, we find him 
sharing the common lot, falling into the same folly, the 
same mistakes, which have entrapped ourselves ; and 
we are enraged. We feel ourselves deceived. True ; 
but it was ourselves deceived ourselves. The greatest 
eloquence, the most irresistible power over masses of 
men, will not prevent a man from crying out, when he 
is drowning, " Help me, Cassius, or I sink!" Our 
mortal god will shake when the fever-fit is on him, 
and beg, " Give me some drink, Titinius," as a sick 
girl ; and, in the fever-fit of love, is not likely to be half 
so sensible as a sick girl. Our gods are not really any 
more foolish than ourselves ; but our own follies are 
acted, not scanned, and no one knows them. John 
Weslej' makes a poor figure in love ; and John Smith is 
very angry with him on that account. But if all that 
John Smith said and did when he was in love had been 
published in a memoir, word for word, doubt for doubt, 
pang for pang, thrill for thrill, would it read any bet- 
ter? In the case of most of us, the reason we are not 
covered with blushes for our silly sentimentalisms, or 
our sillier rejections of them, is, that our obscurity 
has kept them from being of the slightest interest 
to the world. If we had made as fine a figure as 
John Wesley we should have made as poor a one. 
Being nobodies, we enacted our follies without so 



416 SERMONS TO TEE CLERGY. 

much as suspecting they were follies ; and when a 
man comes towering so far above us, that even his 
weaknesses are learned and conned by rote, we rage 
as if some strange thing had happened unto him, and 
not that which is common unto man. But even that 
is better than to hold up these weaknesses as virtues 
and graces to be extolled and imitated. Did all this 
self-examination, this consultation with the elders, 
this dependence upon divine direction, amount to any 
thing? These people certainly made no better mar- 
riages than those who fall in love the natural way, and 
say nothing about it. Nor do I believe that they got 
any more happiness or holiness out of their strong 
crying and tears than an honest lover gets in 
making love to a nice girl. If the human mind is 
capable of comprehending the divine will, courting, 
and not crying, is the Heaven-appointed pathway to 
marriage. When Whiten* eld was spreading his letters 
before the Lord, and blessing him that he was not 
in love, he was despising the means of grace, and 
setting up unmanly methods of his own ; and he ought 
to have had a poor wife, or have been made miserable 
by a good one. All this backing and filling seems 
childish. All this talk about the divine direction is 
worse than childish. Wesley thought the heavens and 
the earth should come together to decide whether he 
should, or should not, marry. What does that remind 



FAIR PLAY. 417 

one of but the most inflated and exasperating self- 
conceit ? It is not impossible that a man may marry 
because he thinks it is the divine will that he should ; 
but, the less he says about it, the better. The world 
will be sure to think scornfully of him ; and the world 
is very likely to be right. It is impossible to give 
credence to a man who brings in the Deity as an 
excuse for doing what he wants to do. All the saints 
on earth would not make us believe that God was 
any thing more than an accessory after the fact. He 
who falls in love, and marries a woman with simple, 
straightforward sincerity, because he loves her, is just 
as much in the path of duty as if he had all the elders 
of the church to pray over him. Why should a man 
make a great merit of going around by Robin Hood's 
barn, when all the world reaches the same place by 
taking a straight cut across the fields? 

The Rev. Mr. Venn, writing to the lady who was about 
to become his second wife, says, U I begin to feel 
more concerned than I at first did, lest my children 
should give you trouble ; for, just in proportion 
as I love and value you, I must feel any thing that 
in any degree may affect you. And I say to myself, 
4 How should I be able to bear seeing my dear wife in 
tears, or void of her sweet cheerfulness and vivacity 
of spirit, by any of my children, to whom she has so 
kindly shown herself a friend in need? ' " 



418 SEEMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

Which was certainly amiable in Mr. Venn. But 
how about the children ? The grown woman was much 
better able to take care of herself than were the five 
children under thirteen years of age to take care of 
themselves. They were helpless, and had no voice in 
the matter. She knew what she was about. She went 
into battle with her eyes open. They could give her 
trouble ; but she could mar their life. He was to 
them under the strongest bonds that one human 
being can be to another. She was to take, or to leave ; 
and, after all, the decision was in her own hands. 
Sound sense, accustomed to look at things on all 
sides, would have had a little anxiety to bestow on 
the children, and would not have lavished it all, 
however sweetly, on the mature and independent 
woman. 

Dr. Doddridge seems to have been a most courteous 
and agreeable person. Even the bristling Warburton 
roared him gently. But what is that peculiar mental 
organization which makes it edifying for a man to 
spend his time in writing out in set phrase, "As a 
husband, may I particularly avoid every thing which 
has the appearance of pettishness. . . . May it be 
my daily care to keep up the spirit of religion in 
conversation with my wife, to recommend her to the 
divine blessing, and to manifest an obliging and 
tender disposition towards her" ? What sort of 



FAIR PLAT 419 

tenderness is that which a man resolves upon? How 
shall he go to work to take care to keep up any thing 
in talking with his wife ? What elaborate and cumber- 
some machinery where there should be spontaneity! 
And if a good man must needs grind out his emo- 
tions in this laborious fashion, and his biographer, 
cannot conscientiously hush it up, why should he not 
soften it down by referring it to the pompous custom 
of the age, and not blindly blazon it as something 
admirable, and worthy of imitation? No one would 
divorce religion from the marketing and the house- 
rent ; but no one wants the marriage-ceremony per- 
formed every morning. Self-survey and attitudinizing 
do not neutralize the excellence of a good man ; but 
simplicity and self-forgetfulness are better. 

When Lord Dartmouth was rebuked for his tardi- 
ness in waiting upon the king at a morning ride, he 
replied, " I have learned to wait upon the King of 
kings before I wait on my earthly sovereign.' ' Could 
any thing be more ill bred, indecorous, priggish? Yet 
the biographer finds heart to say, " May the lofty and 
uncompromising tone of his religious character ever 
distinguish the institution which bears his name ! " 

Let not the graduates of Dartmouth College flatter 
themselves that any president would long retain in his 
cabinet an attorney-general or a war secretary who 
could not rise early enough to keep his appointments. 



420 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

The probability is, that he would presently find his 
religious character to be not the only uncompromising 
thing in the world, and would speedily and deservedly 
be relegated to that private station where he could take 
his own time to his devotions. 

Nor does his inflexibility as a devotee seem to have 
been carried into his duties as a statesman, since the 
profane historian tells us, that though, in the adminis- 
tration of his own department, he at first assumed 
some degree of independence, "he soon betrayed a 
want of consistency and firmness, which, although he 
was inclined to good measures, led him to join in 
sustaining the worst.' ' We are told that there are 
odds in deacons ; but we would much rather know 
that Secretary Fish could be depended upon for main- 
taining the honor of the country intact than that he 
kept President Grant waiting while he said his 
prayers. 

Lady Huntingdon wished to build a chapel. 

" Wherein could she curtail ? There lay her jewels, long since 
put aside for a pearl of infinitely greater price ; and these she 
determined to offer to her Lord. They were sold for six hun- 
dred and ninety-eight pounds; and with this she erected a neat 
house of worship. 

" During her last years, Lady Huntingdon's style of living 
"befitted less an English peer than an heir of glory. Her equipage 
and furniture were extremely simple ; and, although her income 
was much increased at her son's death, so ample were her bene- 



FAIR PLAY. 421 

factions, that she allowed herself but one dress a year, — a degree 
of economy that might well shame many a Christian woman 
whose adorning consists far more in the 'putting-on of apparel* 
than ' the hidden man of the heart in that which is not corrupti- 
ble. ' 

"She maintained the college at her own expense; she erected 
chapels in most parts of the kingdom; and she supported 
preachers, who were sent to preach in various parts of the 
world. This was, indeed, consecration to God. ' Go thou . . . 
and do likewise.' " 

The real lesson of Lady Huntingdon's energy and 
beneficence are likely to be lost in this headlong 
oinnivorousness. Such utter confusion of thought 
would be amusing, as well as amazing, if it were not 
mischievous. Lady Huntingdon laid aside her jewels 
for the pearl of greater price. Are the two incompati- 
ble? From the day when Abraham's pious servant 
adorned Rebekah with jewels of silver, and jewels of 
gold, ear-rings upon her face, and bracelets upon her 
hands, until the day when the holy city, the New 
Jerusalem, came down from God out of heaven, 
wholly made up of gold and precious stones, these 
gems have been held in honor, the type and emblem of 
all pure and priceless things. Does the Tract Society 
mean to teach, or does it believe that St. Peter meant 
to teach, that the young schoolgirl, wearing a gold 
locket on her velvet ribbon, and a silk bow on her 
braided hair, cannot be a Christian? Does the oyster 
secrete a substance that is fatal to piety? 36 



422 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

Lady Huntingdon offered her jewels to her Lord, 
and got six hundred pounds for them. We must not 
suppose, however, what the language indicates, that 
the Lord was the purchaser. They probably went no 
farther than the show-case of a London jeweller. But, 
if jewels are incompatible with religion, what right 
had Lad} r Huntingdon to sell hers ? She ought to have 
destroyed them. That she wanted to build chapels 
with the proceeds is nothing to the purpose. Shall we 
ruin some souls to save others ? 

Was it right that her style of living befitted less an 
English peer than an heir of glory? At the most, she 
was only an heir-expectant of glory ; but the peerage 
was a present fact. It was her duty to live in a man- 
ner befitting her actual earthly rank as much as her 
supposed heavenly rank. The very best way to pre- 
pare for the next world is to discharge the duties of 
this. 

Does the Tract Society mean that the rich ladies of 
Boston, New York, and Washington, — the wives of 
the merchant-princes, the great lawyers, the cabinet 
ministers, — should have no jewels, should ride always 
in horse-cars, should carpet their floors with straw- 
matting, buy only one gown a year, and devote their 
money to building meeting-houses, and supporting 
ministers? If this is not meant, what is meant? 
u This was, indeed, consecration to God." Where in 



FAIR PLAY. 423 

the Bible, where in the whole realm of reason, can such 
a doctrine be found ? It is the creed of monasticism, 
not of religion. The teaching of the Bible is, that, if 
a man be just, and do that which is lawful and right, 
if he have not oppressed any, if he have executed 
true judgment between man and man, he is just, he 
shall surely live, saith the Lord God. If a man sell 
his jewels, and support preachers, and build meeting- 
houses, he shall be holy to God, saith the Tract 
Society. If Lady Huntingdon must shame her Chris- 
tian sisters because she had but one gown a j'ear, how 
much more those holy mendicant friars, who have but 
one sackcloth shirt in seven years ! 

I do not believe that Lady Huntingdon was half so 
objectionable a woman as her biographer makes her 
out to be. Her independence, her strength, her zeal, 
her grasp and control of circumstances, were altogether 
admirable. She was not always, but she was often, 
clear-sighted. Her activity, her vitality, were mar- 
vellous. But when we are taken to her shrine, and 
bidden to bow down and worship, we instinctively 
straighten up so rigidly, that we are in danger of 
bending backward. We are called upon to admire 
weakness as strength, to revere tastes as virtues. It 
may have been wise in Lad}^ Huntingdon to spend her 
substance in building chapels ; but to point the moral, 
"Go and do thou likewise/' is an impertinence. It 



424 SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. 

was no more an offering to the Lord for her to sell her 
jewels than it is for another woman to wear them. 
An heir of glory may enclose as much sin in one gown 
a year as in six or sixteen. The woman who never 
erected a meeting-house in her life, nor ever gave a 
ten-cent scrip to the Tract Society, the woman who 
rides in her satin coach, and is draped in velvet, and 
hung with diamonds, may be as truly consecrated to 
God as was Lady Huntingdon. What has God done 
that gold and silver and purple and scarlet and fine- 
twined linen should not be his,, now, as in the olden 
time? Of the temple is left not one stone upon 
another ; but know ye not that your bod}' is the temple 
of the Holy Ghost? Therefore, glorify God in your 
body. 

Real biography would be the most interesting read- 
ing in the world ; but that we can seldom, perhaps 
never, command. Nor is it prohibited to friends and 
admirers to veil defects. But it is not lawful to sum 
up character without reference to defects. Still less is 
it lawful to depict them as beauties. The cause of 
right living is not to be promoted by such aid. What 
we want is to see things as they are, not to point a 
moral, or to support a theory. And any religious 
society, or any religious person, who wilfully distorts 
the truth, or who ignorantly mingles good and evil, 



FAIR PLAT. 425 

wisdom and folly, in a weak moral mush, and then 
deals it out as the bread of life, is likely to do more 
harm by nauseating the healthy than service in feeding 
the hungry. 



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